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THE VOLITIONAL ELEMENT 
IN KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

AND OTHER ESSAYS IN PHILOSOPHY 
AND RELIGION 



BY 
DELO CORYDON GROVER, S.T.B. 

44 

DEAN OF SCIO COLLEGE, PROFESSOR OF PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION 



INTRODUCTION BY 

FRANCIS J. McCONNELL, D.D., LL.D. 

PRESIDENT DE PAUW UNIVERSITY 




BOSTON 

SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 

1911 



r* 



V 5 



Copyright, 1911 
Sherman, French &+ Company 



^ v 



©CI.A2S9453 



THE MEMORY OF 

BORDEN PARKER BOWNE 

SCHOLAR, THEOLOGIAN, PHILOSOPHER, 

WHO FIRST TAUGHT US THE IDEALISTIC WAY OF 

INTERPRETING MAN, THE WORLD AND GOD AND 

THEIR MUTUAL RELATIONS, THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED 

BY THE AUTHOR 



Chapter 



II. 
III. 

IV. 
V. 

VI. 
VII. 



CONTENTS 

Introduction, by' Francis J. Mc- 
Connell, D.D., LL.D. . 

Author's Preface 

The Volitional Element in 

Knowledge and Belief 
The Higher Criticism . * . 
Men and the Church 
The Theological Education De- 
manded^ by the Times ". 
The Opportunities of The Min- 
istry as a Life^Work 
A Study of Doctrines 
A Group of Studies of the Life 

and Times of Jesus . . 
Preliminary Considerations ... 62 
The Nation and the Times of Jesus . 64 
The Birth and Infancy of Jesus . . 68 
The Childhood Home and School 

Life of Jesus 74 

"The Eighteen Silent Years" . . 78 
The Wilderness Temptations ; — A 
Key to the Interpretation of the 

Life of Jesus 81 

The Miracles of Jesus 86 

The Logic of the Resurrection*. . 91 
On the Coming of Jesus .... 100 
Thoughts on the Ascension . . . 104 



Page 



1 
11 

19 
31 

44 



62 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

VIII. Of the Increase of Christ's 

Kingdom 109 

IX. "In Christ" 114 

X. The Philosophy of Christian 

Prayer 118 

XI. The Philosophy of the Rela- 
tion of the Messianic Hope 
to the Attainment of Human 

Righteousness 1£7 

XII. The Bible — What is Claimed 

for It 136 

XIII. Origin of the New Testament 

and the Fixing of the Canon . 141 

XIV. A Conviction About Sin . . . 147 
XV. The Philosophy of Retribution 152 

XVI. A Brief Examination of Spen- 
cer's Definition of Evolution 159 
XVII. "We All Are Prophets" ... 168 



INTRODUCTION 

This volume of essays is in general in line with 
the philosophic principles of the late Dr. Borden 
P. Bowne. The very title of the essay which 
gives the book its name, "The Volitional Ele- 
ment in Knowledge and Belief," would indicate 
kinship with the Bowne philosophy. Dr. Bowne 
possessed in a singular degree the power of 
rousing his followers to think on their own ac- 
count and to carry out his principles in apply- 
ing his implications in fields beyond the strictly 
philosophical. He used to feel that his philos- 
ophy had significance for all departments of 
Christian thinking and practice. If he had lived 
he would have been glad to see the use which 
Dean Grover has made of one of his fundamental 
conceptions, namely, the significance of will for 
Christian belief. 

We are coming to see in these latter days that 
the Christian system does not depend for its 
chief basis upon formal argument. This does 
not mean that the formal arguments for Chris- 
tianity are not better than the formal argu- 
ments against Christianity. Christianity is not 
to be overthrown by argument. On the other 
hand, however, it is not to find its firmest foun- 
dation in argument. Strict argument leaves us 
many times with a drawn battle. The will must 
come in to make a choice and the satisfaction 



ii INTRODUCTION 

which follows the choice of the Christian position 
is the real argument for Christianity. 

This does not mean however that Christianity 
is to dispense with thinking to make clear, first 
of all, the presuppositions of the Christian sys- 
tem. Dean Grover has done well to point out 
the fact that all thinking, of whatever sort, pro- 
ceeds upon assumption. Assumption is inevi- 
table, but we must know when we are assuming 
and when we are reasoning upon what has been 
assumed. Works like this volume of essays have 
large value in that they train the mind to see 
just what assumption is necessary and then to 
guard the mind against thinking that assumption 
is reasoning or that reasoning can take the place 
of or do without assumption. The one difficulty 
with present day "Pragmatism" is that in the 
hands of many disciples it results in general 
looseness of intellectual procedure. The lead- 
ers of the pragmatic movement have of course 
not intended this result. The will to believe is 
all-essential but the will must be an enlightened 
one, making its choices rationally and reasoning 
about them in a logical manner. 

Just at present Pragmatism is the order of 
the day in Christian thinking. Correctly un- 
derstood this principle is nothing more or less 
than the philosophical statement of the truth 
that those who will to do the will of God shall 
know the doctrine of Christ. The system is open 
to ridiculous excesses however and harmful 



INTRODUCTION iii 

abuses. There is danger in the new movement 
that the claims of strict logic and scholarship 
will at many points be over-ridden. The total 
effect of reading Dean Grover's book will be to 
guard against the extremes and the aberrations 
of the movement. 

The other essays in the volume deal some with 
critical and some with practical matters. We be- 
lieve that the careful reading of them will tend 
to the intellectual strengthening and the doctrinal 
upbuilding of believers. 

May the essays be widely read, especially 
among ministers ! Those who read these essays 
will not only get thorough and solid instruction 
but will also gain an impulse toward that in- 
telligent and critical thoughtfulness without 
which spiritual zeal cannot accomplish the best 
results. 

Francis J. McConnell. 



PREFACE 

There is nothing more pressing in the thought 
activities of our time than the bringing into true 
perspective the matter of presuppositions in 
Philosophy and Religion. The really significant 
philosophical and religious thinking of our time 
is, in all cases where the thinking is consistent, 
based upon the appropriate presuppositions. 

A root idea, not particularly original with the 
author, which underlies the following essays, is 
that these presuppositions which are so deter- 
minative for all our thinking and for all our 
conclusions are largely a matter of the will ; that 
is, the mental response to the soul's environ- 
ment which these represent is practical, pas- 
sional, volitional. 

Philosophical theory is determined in charac- 
ter and speculative significance by its presup- 
positions touching two questions. First, is 
thinking and knowing an active process repre- 
senting the self-directed working of a unitary 
and abiding ego, or is it a passive process rep- 
resenting the reaction which something which 
may be variously styled brain, mind, substance 
or inner life makes against something which may 
be variously styled nerve stimuli, sensation or the 
outer world? The philosophers of this genera- 
tion see more clearly than ever what a long train 
of consequences for moral and speculative theory 



vi PREFACE 

follow upon the answer to this question. What 
the answer shall be is, at the first and at the 
last, with more or less analytical reflection 
thrown between, determined volitionally. The 
present author holds it as a rational presupposi- 
tion that thinking and knowing represent the 
self-activity of a unitary and abiding ego. 

A second question, the answer to which is 
equally determinative for philosophical theory, 
runs as follows : Is fundamental being to be re- 
garded as intelligent, free, purposive, self-exist- 
ent embodiment of the principle of efficient caus- 
ation, or is it non-intelligent, non-purposive, non- 
causal, essentially an unknowing and unknowable 
somewhat of which nothing can be affirmed and 
nothing denied? Upon a thinker's answer to 
this question will depend the trend and outcome 
of all his logical reasoning in metaphysical 
theory. Here also will follow important specu- 
lative consequences touching the problems of 
thought and knowledge and the bases of religion. 
It is a conviction with the author that funda- 
mental being can be found nowhere short of free 
intelligence, self-existent, the constant and un- 
failing creator and up-holder of all that is, the 
World-ground, the Absolute, the Christian's 
God. If something less than this is to be ac- 
cepted as rational presupposition in metaphysi- 
cal theory, nevertheless the author can not begin 
with any metaphysical presupposition, touching 
fundamental being, short of self-existent, causal 



PREFACE vii 

intelligence if, upon reflection, he hopes to reach 
any very valuable conclusion. The primary ac- 
ceptance of such presupposition is volitional. 
Afterwards it is supported by processes of an- 
alytical reflection which, other assumptions being 
freely made, shut our thought up to accept it or 
nothing. Then follows with the present author 
its final acceptance, which in the last analysis is 
free, rational, volitional. 

All persons whose thinking is worth while and 
whose interpretations have significance are con- 
sciously or unconsciously on one side of the 
philosophical debate as determined by their 
voluntarily accepted presuppositions. In all 
completed theory the conclusions of philosophy 
become the presuppositions of religion. Religi- 
ous life and theory in all stages of their develop- 
ment are moulded according to some more or less 
clearly accepted philosophical conclusions con- 
cerning man, the world and the world-ground, 
and the relations of these to each other. This 
is as true of the undeveloped savage as of the 
man of civilization. It is natural for man, sav- 
age or civilized, to have a philosophy, that is, 
a way of looking at things, a way of interpreting 
himself, the world and the ground of both. 
Philosophy is not yet perfected, but it is a far 
cry from the metaphysics of idealism to that of 
the totemism or animism of the savage. Man 
has not yet attained the last word in philosophy 
or religion, but he presses on toward the goal. 



viii PREFACE 

Professor Bowne says of philosophy that it is 
"militant, not triumphant." The same is true 
also of religion. 

Among the author's presuppositions in reli- 
gion underlying the following essays are these : 
Man has a body and he is a soul. He has all his 
being in the constant will of infinite free intelli- 
gence. Man can only be adequately explained 
as a free person created in the image of the only 
God. The only real explanation of the world 
of fact and reason is found also in God. 

God is the only one completely personal, that 
is, whose powers of self-direction are only limited 
by the laws of reason which are the laws of his 
own nature. Nor has God created the world of 
finite persons and matter with which we are 
familiar and then withdrawn Himself to some 
hypothetical somewhere from which point of view 
He may now look upon the vicissitudes of His 
own created world. God is immanently present 
in all His world in creative power and constant 
special care and oversight. 

Finally, religion is most helpfully conceived, 
as Henry Churchill King has so ably shown, in 
terms of personal relationship. It is believed 
that the power of religion to redeem and trans- 
form a sin-discouraged humanity is to-day more 
generally than before seen to begin and be magni- 
fied in the establishment and nurturing of right 
personal relationships, primarily with God 
through Jesus Christ and in only a less degree 



PREFACE ix 

through any others of God's children who will 
for the love of their brothers bring them unto 
Jesus, to know whom is to know the living 
God. 



THE VOLITIONAL ELEMENT IN 
KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

'"A 
The opening essay of this series has to do with 
an important feature of the problem of knowl- 
edge and belief. In its preparation the writer 
has found especially interesting and helpful the 
work of Professor James, entitled, "The Will to 
Believe," and the work of Professor Bowne, en- 
titled, "The Theory of Thought and Knowl- 
edge." Mention may also be made of the essay 
by Wilfrid Ward, entitled, "The Wish to Be- 
lieve," in which the passional element in belief 
is discussed. The fact that the author writes 
from a Roman Catholic standpoint does not in 
this case materially change the value of the ar- 
gument. The author vindicates the "wish to be- 
lieve" as a legitimate aid in the attainment of 
truth. The essay is well written and is in the 
form of three dialogues in which the chief speak- 
ers are an agnostic lawyer and a Catholic priest. 
To most people the problem of knowledge is 
not a problem at all; they just know, and that is 
all there is of it. If they have studied psychol- 
ogy a little, they probably analyze the mind into 
intellect, sensibility and will. They then declare 
that the mind knows with the intellect, and that 
knowledge is the result. 
1 



2 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

When we come to the realm of belief we find 
the unreflecting multitude believing or disbeliev- 
ing very largely as directed by self-interest, and 
with little care for any rules of logic. As soon 
as a little science is learned such unreasoned 
belief is very likely to be dethroned, and per- 
haps cast out as evil, while unreflection gives 
way to skepticism, and Reason (spelled with a 
big R), pledged to the worship of "objective 
evidence," and "absolute certitude," is enthroned. 
Clifford is quoted by James as saying: "It is 
wrong always, everywhere, and for everyone, to 
believe anything upon insufficient evidence," all 
of which sounds very well indeed. But it must 
not be forgotten that what constitutes sufficient 
evidence upon which to base belief is itself a ques- 
tion upon which not all minds agree. Clifford 
himself would no doubt have difficulty in pro- 
ducing "objective evidence" which all would re- 
gard as sufficient to warrant all his belief. Has 
Clifford then no right to believe that in support 
of which he finds evidence which he is willing to 
accept as sufficient? Most certainly he has such 
right, and further, as a condition precedent 
to all his belief, he not only may, but must 
will, upon his part and as for himself, to ac- 
cept the evidence as sufficient to warrant such 
belief. 

In this world no knowledge is complete. All 
human knowledge is based upon certain assump- 
tion. In any absolute sense we never can go 



THE VOLITIONAL ELEMENT 3 

beyond the probable. For us no knowledge is 
absolute. 

Absolute and universal skepticism in the sense 
of universal doubting and questioning is there- 
fore possible. Upon the plane of formal logic 
where so-called "objective evidence" is always re- 
quired, and where "absolute certitude" is the 
only good, the end of the argument must be 
thorough-going agnosticism and collapse. There 
is nothing that may not be questioned. We are 
not weakened but fortified by this recognition 
of our human limitations. There is nothing 
then beyond the reach of the Pyrrhonistic skep- 
tic. James is right when he says, "No concrete 
test of what is really true has ever been agreed 
upon." There is no such thing as "absolute 
certitude" based upon "objective evidence." 
Knowledge is not determined thus independently 
of the knower. Bowne puts it this way in his 
chapter on "Philosophic Skepticism," "The no- 
tion of an official speculative standard apart 
from mind, a kind of philosophic standard metre, 
is absurd. The mind is necessarily its own 
standard and judge." Those who think that 
the mind has nothing to do with the determina- 
tion of its own knowledge and beliefs, that the 
volitional character of knowledge and belief is 
only a fancy, and that the mind is really forced 
by "objective evidence" to the acknowledg- 
ment of "absolute certitude," or to the exercise 
of belief or disbelief, would do well to note care- 



4 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

fully the following from Professor James, and 
they will see how uncertain a thing "absolute 
certitude" may be. He says : "For what a con- 
tradictory array of opinions have objective evi- 
dence and absolute certitude been claimed! The 
world is rational through and through, — its ex- 
istence is an ultimate brute fact; there is a per- 
sonal God, — a personal God is inconceivable; 
there is an extra-mental physical world immedi- 
ately known, — the mind can only know its own 
ideas; a moral imperative exists, — obligation is 
only the resultant of desires ; a permanent 
spiritual principle is in every one, — there are 
only shifting stages of mind; there is an endless 
chain of causes, — there is an absolute first cause ; 
an eternal necessity, — a freedom; a purpose, — 
no purpose; a primal one, — a primal many; a 
universal continuity, — an essential discontinuity 
in things; an infinity, — no infinity. There is 
this, — -there is that; there is indeed nothing 
which someone has not thought absolutely true, 
while his neighbor deemed it absolutely false." 

We must recognize the volitional action of the 
mind in determining its own knowledge and be- 
lief. We must conclude with Bowne that "Mind 
is necessarily its own standard and judge," and 
that "every rational being must at last trust his 
rational insight." 

We may define the will as the whole mind in 
its power to put forth acts of volition. There 
is an old notion in psychology that the mind is 



THE VOLITIONAL ELEMENT 5 

divided into intellect, sensibility and will, some- 
thing as if the mind had three rooms. In one 
room all acts of perceiving and knowing take 
place. Marked over the door to this room is 
the awe-inspiring word Intellect. In another 
room all the tears are shed, all the laughs are 
enjoyed, all acts of feeling are indulged. Over 
the door to this room is marked Sensibility. In 
a third room all volitions are put forth and all 
choices made. Over its door is the word Will. 
What is done in any one of these rooms is, ac- 
cording to this way of thinking, independent of 
what is done in any other. Such a psychology 
is of course purely academical, and leaves actual 
life out of the account. The truth seems to be 
that the unitary mind is involved in every act 
of knowing, feeling, or willing. In every voli- 
tion there are elements of knowing and feeling. 
So in feeling there are both volitional and intel- 
lectual elements, and in knowing there are voli- 
tional and emotional elements. 

We are now ready for our main proposition, 
viz. : In this world there can be no knowledge 
or belief that does not involve a volitional ele- 
ment, and that is not ultimately determined by 
the will. 

Theoretically and actually there can be no 
absolute knowledge for a finite mind. This prop- 
osition is, we believe, without serious question 
among speculators. That which in practical 
life we do very well to call knowledge can really 



6 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

claim for itself only a high degree of prob- 
ability. While in practical affairs we properly 
enough distinguish between knowledge and belief, 
yet we should not forget that what men call 
knowledge can never claim from the reflective 
mind absolute certitude, but only a strong de- 
gree of faith. As there is a volitional element 
in belief there is also a volitional element in our 
knowledge. It seems to us that both Bowne and 
James fail in the full statement of the case just 
here, for, while both clearly demonstrate the 
volitional element in belief, both fail apparently 
to recognize a like volitional element in knowl- 
edge. The mind must will to assume the trust- 
worthiness of its own perceptive and reflective 
processes before it can get on at all. My mind 
must will to assume the trustworthiness of my 
senses before I can make any progress towards 
knowledge. I may will not to trust my nature, 
but by so doing I deliberately shut the door to 
all knowledge to which I might otherwise attain. 
Most important and manifold assumption must 
be made therefore as a condition precedent to 
the attainment by us of any knowledge or belief. 
This assumption can be made only as the mind 
wills to make it. 

All this has a very important bearing upon 
the work of the Christian minister who is sent 
to call sovereign, free, moral agents to a pos- 
sible knowledge of and belief in God. It is 
worth much for us to know that there can be 



THE VOLITIONAL ELEMENT 7 

no knowledge or belief, in any realm, until the 
will steps in and declares certain assumptions 
made. Further the mind must will to declare 
the case closed and pronounce a verdict for 
probability, or moral certainty, which we may 
call knowledge, but which is only another name 
for a high degree of probability. Our arriving 
at any truth at all, therefore, depends very 
much upon our own will to know. So likewise 
our arriving at any faith depends upon our own 
will to believe. If we will not will to know we 
can not be forced to know anything. The 
thoroughgoing agnostic is one who will not will 
to know anything. As with knowledge so with 
belief; if we will not will to believe we can not be 
forced to believe anything, not even that these 
bodies of ours have any real existence, or that 
we have anything to do with our own choices. 
The old saying, therefore, is true not only as an 
"old saying" but as a philosophical proposition 
— "No one is so blind as he who will not see." 
We can now also understand how it is that "a 
man convinced against his will is of the same 
opinion still." 

If the proposition which we are seeking to 
prove is sound, viz. : that, "In this world there 
can be no knowledge or belief that does not in- 
volve a volitional element, and that is not ulti- 
mately determined by the will," that fact must 
indeed have an important bearing upon the work 
of the Christian minister sent to deal with free 



8 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

agents who can come to a knowledge of or a 
belief in the truth only as each wills so to do. 
Bowne speaks of the "volitional and practical 
nature of belief* as a point "the knowledge of 
which is of great importance, if not absolutely 
necessary for our intellectual salvation." He 
adds upon this point: "Persons living on the 
plane of instinct and hearsay have no intel- 
lectual difficulty here or anywhere else; but per- 
sons entering upon the life of reflection without 
insight into this fact are sure to lose themselves 
in theoretical impotence or in practical impu- 
dence. The impotence manifests itself in a 
paralyzing inability to believe, owing to the 
fancy that theoretical demonstration must pre- 
cede belief. The impudence shows itself in rul- 
ing out with an airy levity the practical princi- 
ples by which men and nations live, because they 
admit of no formal proof. These extremes of 
unwisdom can be escaped only by an insight into 
the volitional and practical nature of belief." 

It is philosophically as well as practically true 
that "If any man willeth to do His will, he shall 
know of the teaching" (John vii, 17, R. V.), 
that is, if any man is so determined to know 
God's will that he is willing to will to do it so 
far as it may be revealed to him, he shall know. 
Jesus here clearly recognized the volitional ele- 
ment in all human knowledge of God's will. 

In conclusion let it be urged that, by the way 



THE VOLITIONAL ELEMENT 9 

of profitable warning, the volitional element in 
both knowledge and belief ought to be persist- 
ently explained until all have knowledge of the 
fact, and especially should this be urged on be- 
half of those, who, for want of a knowledge of 
the volitional character in all knowledge and 
belief, have already well-nigh lost themselves "in 
theoretical impotence or in practical impudence." 

Individuals hear what they will to hear; see 
what they will to see; believe what they will to 
believe, and know what they will to know. And 
it is easily made manifest that in a large degree 
they will to hear what they want to hear; will 
to see what they want to see ; will to believe what 
they want to believe, and will to know what they 
want to know. 

The presence of a more or less influential in- 
tellectual element in knowledge and belief is ad- 
mitted. We urge that there is also a grand 
passional element therein, involving both emotion 
or desire, and volition. Therefore, "Blessed are 
they that hunger and thirst after righteousness, 
for they shall be filled" (Matt, v, 6). 

Finally, believing thoroughly in the practical 
importance of the proposition which we have 
herein tried to elucidate, we repeat it here: In 
this world there can be no knowledge or belief 
that does not involve a volitional element, and 
that is not ultimately determined by the will. 
Whosoever will will to know and believe the 



10 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

truth may. The provision has been made for 
the spiritual and intellectual salvation of every 
individual. Let it not be forgotten that the 
final consummation rests with the human will. 



II 

THE HIGHER CRITICISM 

WHAT IT IS, ITS DANGERS AND ITS ADVANTAGES TO 
THE PREACHER. 

The higher criticism is no longer to be ig- 
nored, but to be understood. Preacher and lay- 
man must inhale something of the odors, or 
fumes, which arise from the too often heated 
discussions of the questions in a study of the 
subject. Certainly no preacher can afford not 
to know what the higher criticism really is. It 
should neither be ignored nor denounced, but 
studied. 

If the critics and their followers have too 
often been puffed up with their own knowledge 
and conceit, it is also true that some have lost 
no opportunity to denounce them as the foes of 
the church and of Christ. When we were study- 
ing in the school of theology, all the students one 
day received a pamphlet in which the higher 
critics and Robert G. Ingersoll were put in the 
same class as foes of Christianity. The author 
of that pamphlet is, we believe, proclaiming to- 
day more extreme views than ever before. 

Doctor C. M. Cobern has spoken of Professor 
Charles H. H. Wright as "that thoroughly or- 
thodox Old Testament scholar," and then quoted 
the following from the Professor's pen: "There 
11 



12 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

are those, alas, who look upon every deviation 
from the old traditional views as akin to apos- 
tasy from the faith. But they who are gifted 
with a firmer faith in the 'oracles of God' and 
are indisposed to think the 'ark' in danger be- 
cause the oxen happen to stumble, will welcome 
all new light upon every Biblical question." 

It is important that every preacher, not only 
for his own sake, but also for the sake of his 
congregation, should have at least an intelligent 
general understanding of the wide field of Bibli- 
cal research and criticism. All preachers need 
not be specialists in this branch of technical in- 
quiry, but all need to be so prepared that they 
may give wise and safe counsel to their people in 
all matters so involving the foundations of re- 
ligious faith and life. With this in mind it is our 
purpose to consider briefly, in this essay, the na- 
ture of the higher criticism, together with some 
reflections touching its dangers and its advant- 
ages to the preacher. 

First, what is the higher criticism? Perhaps 
no single sentence is enough in which to define 
it. But we may describe it. Doctor Cobern 
says: "It is not a set of theories or conclusions 
of any kind; it is a method." Principal Cave, 
of Hackney College, London, asks : "What is the 
critical method?" He answers his question by 
saying: "It is the examination of the books of 
the Bible by the same principles by which all 
literature is studied ; it is logic ; it is the applica- 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 13 

tion to the law and the prophets of that in- 
ductive method by which discoveries innumerable 
have been made in all the paths of research." 
Professor Ladd says: "By the higher criticism 
is meant that study which tries to reproduce 
the influences and circumstances out of which the 
Biblical books arose, and thus exhibit them as 
true children of their own time." We once 
heard President Harper declare that the stock 
questions of the higher critic are the same as 
every thorough-going Sunday-school teacher had 
been asking for a long period; namely, "Who 
wrote this scripture which we are now studying? 
When? Where? Under what conditions? For 
what immediate purpose?" etc. 

It may also be noted that there are, as we 
should indeed expect, several kinds of higher 
criticism. We may speak of the higher criti- 
cism as moderate, or immoderate; as construc- 
tive, or destructive. As to the critics them- 
selves, they may be Christian or non-Christian; 
they may be real truth-seekers, or only learned 
quibblers. 

The great need is for all Christians to be- 
come, in a real sense, moderate, constructive in- 
quirers into Biblical knowledge and divine truth. 
The results of any particular application of the 
higher critical method in the study of the Bible 
will depend largely on the character of the critic. 
Is he Christian, or unbelieving? Is he inclined 
to be a builder, or a destroyer? What is his 



14 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

spirit? The character of a critic's work will 
depend somewhat upon his scholastic attain- 
ments, but quite as much upon what he is. 

The reason why there may be such marked 
dangers as have been often pointed out, while 
at the same time there may be important ad- 
vantages accruing from the higher criticism, 
arises largely from the fact that we thus do 
have so many kinds of critics, and these different 
kinds of critics make so many different uses of 
the scientific method of research. 

We have thus far sought to describe the na- 
ture of the higher criticism. We have learned 
that it is not a system of theories or conclusions, 
but it is a method. We have also learned that 
there are many kinds of critics, moderate and 
immoderate, constructive and destructive, Chris- 
tian and non-Christian ; and that the results vary 
as do the critics. Hence the possibilities of 
dangers, upon the one hand, and of advantages, 
upon the other, from the higher criticism. These 
dangers and advantages we now propose to con- 
sider as they directly affect the preacher. And, 
first, the dangers to the preacher from the 
higher criticism may be enumerated thus: 

One danger is that the preacher will allow 
himself to be panic-stricken. Men have been 
stampeded by the noise of a cry which they did 
not so much as take pains to understand. The 
Word says : "Be still, and know that I am God." 
The man who believes in God need not be anxi- 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 15 

ous for the truth. If we believed that Satan 
waged an equal warfare with our God, then it 
would do for us to be anxious for God's truth, 
and to worry lest it should be overthrown. But 
as we believe in God, we need not have any fear 
as to who will triumph. "Uzza put forth his 
hand to hold the ark," and the Lord smote Uzza 
for an everlasting example to the fearful and 
faithless. Therefore, let the investigation go on 
until we know all that can be known about the 
Word of God. Let us not worry lest the truth 
of God should be lost. It can be lost only by 
one who, knowing the truth, refuses to glorify 
God in it; or by one who might know the truth, 
but who, lest some idol of ignorance should be 
overthrown, refuses to use the eyes which God 
gave him for the discovery of the truth. May 
we all have faith enough to ask with every faith- 
ful Sunday-school scholar, when, and by whom, 
and under what circumstances the Bible was 
written ! May we have faith enough not to fear, 
as did Uzza, lest the ark of God should be over- 
thrown ! Only as we come to the study of the 
Bible with such a truth-loving, God-believing, 
teachable mind, can it be possible for us to 
learn the message which the God of all truth 
has in it for us. Avoid the danger before which 
Uzza fell. 

Another danger is that the preacher will say 
too much about the higher criticism in his pul- 
pit, either to defend or to denounce it. It is 



16 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

a safe rule for a preacher to follow in his ordi- 
nary pulpit ministrations never to mention the 
name of the higher criticism, or any of its kin. 
It is our conviction that in most cases the men- 
tion of the name will at once close some doors 
against the real truth, while it will not open any 
others to the truth. 

Still another danger is that of arrogance and 
conceit. " Beware of the leaven of the Phari- 
sees !" Let the preacher who favors the higher 
criticism take special pains to heed this warning. 
Above all else in this connection, do not use any 
terms or any argument which may unduly re- 
flect upon the earnest or pious wisdom of the 
fathers. 

There is more peril to the preacher arising 
from the higher criticism in that he may get into 
the habit of preaching his doubts in the pulpit. 
This is, perhaps, the greatest danger of all. 
Mere rabbis may tell what some other rabbi 
said that some rabbi thought; but prophets of 
God, preachers of the Christ of God, have a 
message which the people need to hear. Preach 
the message. Let the preacher leave his doubts 
in his study until they are dissolved in a larger 
knowledge. In the pulpit let him speak for 
God " as one having authority." When God 
calls a man to preach, He commissions him to 
deliver a positive message, and to speak with 
authority. 

I come now to speak of some real advantages 



THE HIGHER CRITICISM 17 

to the preacher arising from the higher criti- 
cism. 

And, first, it brings to the preacher's work 
a scientific method, which is resolutely demanded 
by the temper of our time. The best thought 
of this age is fearless, candid, rational, believ- 
ing. The higher criticism brings to our use a 
scientific method suited to the times. 

In the second place, it may do much in giv- 
ing freedom from what has sometimes amounted 
to a superstitious reverence for a book. It may 
thereby make way to God. It has been charged 
that while Papists worship the Pope, Protes- 
tants worship a book. This was not the case 
when Luther boldly reconstructed the Biblical 
Canon, but there came to be some grounds for 
such a charge later on. Under the influences of 
the higher critical method, the Bible may now 
again take its sure place in our lives and preach- 
ing as a record of God's progressive revelation 
of himself to men, and of man's progressive dis- 
covery of God. We now learn with Moody and 
the greatest evangelists, as also with the great- 
est scholars of the Word, to think of the Bible 
as inspired not "because it is," but we know it 
is inspired because it inspires. 

We may now consider, finally, some positive 
uses which the preacher may properly make of 
the higher criticism. 

And, first, he may always avail himself of the 
facts which the scholars bring to light, always 



18 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

reserving the right to draw his own conclusions 
from the facts. 

Secondly, he may preach the facts as facts, 
saying nothing about the higher criticism. 
Facts may be delivered with the authority be- 
coming a preacher; theories and unproved hy- 
potheses can not. Proved facts are a part of 
the great fund of God's revealed truth. He 
should make positive use of the facts. 

Thirdly, let all the facts thus used be in- 
terpreted as the Spirit gives the preacher utter- 
ance, he remembering always to apply them 
with a careful view to the needs of those to 
whom he is called to minister. Thus the 
churches may learn the truth truly, and be 
wisely nourished and safeguarded against the in- 
sidious attacks of doubt and skepticism, rather 
than be weakened and destroyed in faith. 

Preachers may thus use the higher criticism 
in the discovery of their own prophetic message 
to the churches of to-day. In conscious honesty 
and manifest loyalty to the truth as it is found 
in the Bible, they may speak with a freshness, a 
power to convict and convert, yea, with the 
"authority" with which God's prophets have 
spoken in every age. 



Ill 

MEN AND THE CHURCH 

No theme of more practical importance can 
be brought to the consideration of Christians 
to-day than this of men and the church. There 
are many signs that the church is waking to the 
problem presented by the fact that relatively 
so few men are found in the churches. The re- 
sults have been tabulated, and are already be- 
coming the basis of reform. 

In the present essay I do not propose to treat 
the subject exhaustively, but only to raise cer- 
tain questions which must be considered in any 
thorough study of the general theme. Such 
questions are the following: 

1. Are men less religious than women? 

2. Why are so few men in the church? 

3. Are the churches really doing the work 
which the church of Christ was founded to do? 
If not, in what do they fail most? 

4. Can substitutes for the church take its 
place (1) in its relation to the individual, (2) 
in its relation to society? 

5. What more should the church do to win 
men? 

I think with reference to the first question that 
it is generally the opinion that men are less 
religious than women. And yet there have been 
19 



20 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

periods of the world's development when it has 
seemed as though all the light and life and knowl- 
edge were for the men. Among some peoples 
women are regarded, even until now, as incapa- 
ble of intellectual, moral or spiritual attain- 
ment. But, thanks to Christianity, it has come 
to pass among all the most civilized races to- 
day that women are given an equal opportunity 
for intellectual and spiritual development with 
men. It is truly significant that only under 
the development of Christianity has woman won 
such noble recognition. And this is a great 
credit to Christianity and its Jewish ante- 
cedents. But who can believe that room is here 
found for the extreme inference that God ever 
intended a higher attainment of moral and spir- 
itual life for women than he did for men? 
Without fear of controversy, it is rather be- 
lieved that any interpretation of God's message 
in which it is assumed that the highest moral 
and religious attainment is alone, or even 
chiefly, for women is a mistaken interpretation. 
No doubt certain types of religion will ap- 
peal more strongly to women than to men. We 
should expect that to be true. If — which may 
be granted — the prevailing interpretations of 
Christianity in the church often have appealed 
more strongly to women than to men, who has 
a right to say that all the fault is with those 
outside the church? May it not be that cer- 
tain very beautiful elements of the gospel of 



MEN AND THE CHURCH 21 

God which appeal more readily to women than 
to men have been disproportionately emphasized 
in the prevailing interpretation of that gospel 
among men? Our interpretation of the spirit- 
ual life may not have been as comprehensive 
as that found in the New Testament. The 
sympathetic, soothing, meek and lowly features 
of the Christ have been rightly emphasized; but 
it is also to be remembered that Jesus was manly, 
virile, courageous, heroic. Reference may be 
made to the cleansing of the temple; the bear- 
ing of Jesus when he was rejected at Nazareth; 
when he was arrested in Gethsemane; when he 
was before Pilate; or to any of his interviews 
and controversies with the scribes and Phari- 
sees. If the church is more successful in at- 
tracting women than men, it is more than pos- 
sible that the church has not represented the 
Christ to men aright, as it should have done. 
Professor Coe has shown clearly that the pre- 
vailing interpretation of the spiritual life has 
been too largely temperamental. Paul has in- 
sisted that a spiritual exercise, whether it is 
praying, or eating, or whatever it may be, is 
truly such only as it is done as in God's pres- 
ence and with reference to Him. When the 
church has in certain periods of her history 
given real emphasis to those elements of her 
message which for temperamental reasons ap- 
peal as strongly to the masculine as to the fem- 
inine, then has she been as successful in winning 



22 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

men as she has ever been in winning women. 
I am convinced that just at this point the 
church has a real problem. It is not shown 
that men are any less responsive to a rightly 
emphasized interpretation of the Christian ap- 
peal than are women. 

One of the questions which must be consid- 
ered in any thorough study of the present sub- 
ject is, "Why are so few men in the church?" 
Preachers are in the habit of looking at things 
from their point of view. It is for them 
specially important to try to learn how others 
view the same problems they are studying. 

With this in mind I sent out letters at one 
time to about forty of the representative men 
of one Ohio town of about fifteen hundred popu- 
lation, asking them, among other questions: 
"Why are not more men of this town members 
of some church?" I received thoughtful, care- 
ful and manifestly candid replies to considera- 
bly over half the letters sent, besides having the 
opportunity for conversation with the other per- 
sons to whom letters had been sent. Some 
twenty-six clearly defined and distinct reasons 
were offered by my correspondents in answer 
to my question. Somewhat strange to know, 
if I were to classify them as doctrinal and so- 
cial, the reasons would be equally divided be- 
tween the two. Of the doctrinal reasons many 
were formal rather than substantial, and showed 
objection to the organized church, rather than 



MEN AND THE CHURCH 23 

to Christianity. The social reasons given were 
as various as the temperaments and conditions 
of my correspondents. Some replies were from 
members, some from non-members. Two of the 
latter thought the great number of churches in 
our little town kept some men out of any. Four 
church-members thought that secret societies, 
clubs, etc., take the place of the church with 
many men. Four members and two non-mem- 
bers urged that the inconsistent lives of some 
church-members keep many men aloof from the 
church. Two members referred to the careless 
and indifferent religious training which many 
men have received in their childhood and youth 
as a reason for their present indifference to re- 
ligion and the church. Three members believed 
that a good many fear to come within the range 
of the church's influence lest they be brought 
under conviction for sin; hence they stay away. 
Five non-members said that unbelief in essen- 
tial Christian doctrines is a reason why a good 
many men hold aloof from the churches. 

Nearly all distinctly avowed their respect for 
the church, and expressed the belief that it is 
doing good in the community. 

As will be seen I am now only noting the 
special reasons which the men of one representa- 
tive town on the Western Reserve gave in an- 
swer to the question now under consideration. 

Among the doctrinal reasons given were dis- 
belief in miracles, disbelief in the supernatural 



24 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

birth of Jesus, and unbelief in the Bible. And 
among the social reasons were the existence of 
so many lodges, which for many men take the 
place of the church, and a desire to have Sun- 
day for other things than church. Since most 
of these men expressly state their respect for 
the church and their belief that it is doing much 
for the community, I urge them and all others 
like them, to consider that if all men did as they 
do, there would be no churches. Among the 
inconsistencies of church-members which were 
emphasized were hypocrisy and jealousy among 
the members. 

It is believed that the reasons given by the 
men of this town are representative. In view 
of all this, it specially behooves the members 
of the churches to "walk circumspectly" before 
all men, avoiding all hypocrisy and jealousy as 
wholly incompatible with truth and love as it is 
in Christ. "But sanctify in your hearts Christ 
as Lord: being ready always to give answer to 
every man that asketh you a reason concerning 
the hope that is in you, yet with meekness and 
fear: having a good conscience; that, wherein 
ye are spoken against, they may be put to shame 
who revile your good manner of life in Christ." 

As stated above, one of the questions which 
I asked of the men of my own town with refer- 
ence to the churches of that place was the fol- 
lowing: "Are the churches really doing the 
work which the church of Christ was founded 



MEN AND THE CHURCH 25 

to do? If not, in what do they fail most?" 
Most of the men gave an affirmative answer, 
which was qualified by the statement of particu- 
lars in which the churches were thought to fail 
most. 

Not many of my correspondents revealed any 
very clear understanding of just what the 
church of Christ was founded to do. The New 
Testament must naturally be our guide in such 
a matter. Jesus "came to seek and to save the 
lost" (Luke xix, 10). He said he would build 
His church upon a Divinely inspired faith, in 
Himself, confessed (Matt, xvi, 15—18). 

He ordered His disciples to go and "evange- 
lize all peoples," organizing them through bap- 
tism into the faith of the Father, Son and Holy 
Spirit. The newly-enlisted were to be taught 
"all things which Jesus commanded" (Matt, 
xxviii, 18-20). 

Finally, the work of the church was held by 
Jesus to be the same as His own — "As the Fa- 
ther hath sent me, even so send I you" (John 
xx, 21). 

In so far as the churches are measuring up to 
that ideal they are doing what the church of 
Christ was founded to do. In all this it is well 
to remember that the churches are only the ag- 
gregation of the individuals who form them. 

My correspondents named the following par- 
ticulars in which the churches were believed to 
fail most: (1) Too little difference between 



26 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

members and non-members; (2) In some reviv- 
alistic preaching and some discourteous meth- 
ods; (3) Too little of "the personal touch," 
as from members to the outsiders; (4) Too 
little harmony or agreement among the churches ; 
(5) Lack of "charity" (giving) was charged by 
one non-member; (6) "Lack of faith in God 
to launch out upon great things" and "too much 
dependence in man — ministers in particular"; 
(7) Churches were failing to convict individuals 
of sin as they ought, and to convince them of 
their need of a Saviour. This was urged by 
two members; (8) One of the local pastors 
believes the churches are especially failing to 
arouse men to a sense of the sacredness of life, 
with its infinite significance; (9) It was also 
urged that the churches are failing to give the 
pastors "the earnest and prayerful support they 
need to make their work the greatest success." 

Nothing is more needful than that all Chris- 
tians should acquaint themselves with Jesus and 
his teaching, that they may know what the true 
mission of the church of Christ really is. They 
should also study the particulars in which the 
churches fail most, that these may be corrected, 
and that the Bride of Christ may adorn herself 
for his coming. 

Another question which is being asked in 
widely varied circles to-day may be briefly con- 
sidered in this place. Can substitutes for the 
the church take its place: (1) In its relation 



MEN AND THE CHURCH 27 

to the individual, (2) In its relation to so- 
ciety ? 

Doubtless there are many practical substi- 
tutes for the churches. Men and women have 
only a limited amount of energy; and when it is 
spent in one direction, it cannot be used in an- 
other. There are clubs, societies and lodges, 
open and secret, for men and for women, almost 
without number. And doubtless it is true that 
these often interfere with the legitimate claims 
of the church of Christ. The church has been 
derelict in her meeting of the needs of men in 
times past, and hence lodges and orders have 
arisen to do for men what the church, if her 
leaders in their day could have been wise enough, 
might have done and should have done. I am 
quite in harmony with a correspondent who 
writes: "The idea that secret societies and 
lodges have been the cause of keeping men from 
church is, in my opinion, erroneous. These 
lodges have been the natural outcome and result 
of these religiously dissatisfied men, and not the 
cause." My correspondent is right at least as 
regards the primary accounting for lodges and 
orders. Of course, these societies, which arose 
as a result of the church's failure to measure up 
to her full opportunity, may now in turn be- 
come a real cause why more men do not be- 
come members of some church. And, consider- 
ing the more exhaustless possibilities of the 
church, the needs of universal human life, the 



28 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

lodges, if men are not careful, may easily come 
to occupy a position wherein the good shall 
crowd out or hinder the best. This we must 
believe is often the case. 

But the press, the school, legislation, the 
club, the lodge, ethical culture, can no one, 
nor can all, become a substitute for the church 
in its relation to the individual or to society. 
Though the organized church has never reached 
its ideal, it is yet significant that it was founded 
to advance the most universal scheme of human 
brotherhood ever conceived for men. All others 
fall short of it, as all other organizers fall short 
of Christ. The individual cannot achieve his 
best until led to seek his own interests in the 
interests of the rest of humanity. None but 
Christ's church can lead him to this universal 
world-view. 

The same reasoning applies to society. Of 
possible substitutes for the church Archbishop 
Ireland says : "Such things have their place and 
their value, but they do not suffice. Such 
things do not control the inner souls of men 
where virtue or vice is born, whence issue the 
edicts which govern man's outer life in respect to 
himself and his fellowmen. This nothing but 
religion can do." The highest organized repre- 
sentative of religion in the earth is, under vari- 
ous forms, the church of Christ. As compre- 
hensive as the needs of strong men are its powers 



MEN AND THE CHURCH 29 

to satisfy. Other forces and organizations may 
be wholesome and good, but no substitutes can 
for long take the place of the church. 

Finally, what more should the church do to 
win men than it is now doing? Touching this 
question it is my conviction that the signs of 
the times are full of hope. The church is al- 
ready waking to the larger call. She is very 
generally beginning to do that which she must 
continue to do if she would win men. The 
preaching of the church must be virile. It must 
not emphasize less the tender, sympathetic and 
gentle, but it must emphasize more the masculine 
and the strong in the message. Let our minis- 
ters, who have too often disproportionately em- 
phasized those elements in the Christ message 
which appeal most naturally to women, hence- 
forth study to so interpret the Christ message 
as to emphasize those elements which appeal most 
naturally to the masculine, to men. Preach the 
strong, brave, fearless, manly Christ. Call men 
to a service of courage, work, action. Promote 
and encourage the work in the church for boys 
and men. Emphasize the men's club as much as 
the ladies' aid society. Let the church not 
show too much surprise when the men come, but 
make a place for men as men. Let men be 
welcomed in the church as warmly as they are 
welcomed in the lodge. In the application of 
the comprehensive gospel to human problems let 



30 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

real attention be given to those problems which 
are distinctly men's problems. The gospel of 
God in Christ is a gospel for mankind. Let the 
church rightly interpret that message, and men 
will be glad to be won by the appeal. 



IV 



THE THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION DE- 
MANDED BY THE TIMES 

The subject of theological training is one of 
perennial interest to the whole Christian church. 
In the present essay are presented, (1) Some 
preconsiderations tending to invest the subject 
with special timeliness; (2) A representation of 
the present state of theological education; and 
(3) A suggested scheme of theological educa- 
tion in harmony with what is conceived to be the 
demand of the times. 

I. Preconsiderations. The age in which we 
live has witnessed in an eminent degree a widen- 
ing of the bounds of human knowledge. Since 
the dawn of the modern era, we have come to be- 
lieve that the capacity of the human mind for 
conquest is well nigh unlimited. This faith has 
been strengthened by the advance made during 
recent years in the arts and sciences. Illus- 
tration is unnecessary. 

At the same time, in the realm of fundamental 
conceptions, speculative thought passed from 
crass materialism to evolutionism, and then re- 
jected even that as not being adequate to the ex- 
planation of the world, though it may be a 
worthy doctrine of process within the realm of 
scientific observation. Better than ever it is 
31 



32 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

coming to be understood that there is no ex- 
planation of the world except the living God; 
and Theism, therefore, is regaining ground with 
the philosophers. 

All this prepares a scholarly, rational basis 
for the great central truth of the Christian's 
Bible, namely, the doctrine of God, and bodes 
well for all true theology. Speaking of the- 
ology as "the science of God," who is "the be- 
ginning, the middle, and the end of all things," 
President Hartranft well declares that it is "the 
starting point and goal of all genuine knowledge 
as a whole, and of all classified knowledges." 

Turning now to the church, whose mission in- 
cludes the popularization of the truth respecting 
God and theology, as thus conceived, it can not 
be said to have been altogether successful in this 
work. Too many persons in our so-called 
Christian country either wholly ignore the 
church, or shirk all responsibility in regard to it. 
Careful investigation in hundreds of towns and 
several different states shows, according to Jo- 
siah Strong, "that somewhat less than one-half 
the people profess to attend church" ("New 
Era," p. 294). 

Such conditions present a problem which for 
the most part must be solved by the coming 
ministry. When the ministry can adapt the 
gospel to the varied needs of a varied modern 
people, there will not be so much cause for lamen- 
tation over the separation of the masses and 



THE THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION 33 

the church. Of course, without the help of the 
church and the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, 
any ministry can do little; but "Like priest, like 
people" contains truth. All this invests the sub- 
ject of theological education with burning in- 
terest. 

Further, the minister's relative position in so- 
ciety has greatly changed during recent decades. 
He is no longer expected to be the only educated 
man in his community. This indicates a great 
change since the time when more than half of all 
college graduates entered the ministry. Col- 
lege graduates now enter all walks in life, and 
the minister must be prepared to face them in 
the pew. Of Harvard graduates, during 1642 
to 1650, fifty-three and three tenths per cent, 
entered the ministry, while during 1861 to 1870, 
six and seven-tenths per cent, entered the 
ministry. During 1702 to 1710, of Yale gradu- 
ates, seventy-five and seven-tenths per cent, en- 
tered the ministry, while during 1861 to 1870, 
fifteen per cent, did so. 

The Wesley an University, somewhat remark- 
able to know, forms the single exception, show- 
ing, as it does, an increased per cent, of its 
graduates entering the ministry. 1 

i "College Graduates in the Ministry," by C. F. Thwing, 
International Review, August, 1881: — This article is brief, 
thoughtful, comprehensive. It is valuable for its tables 
exhibiting the number of graduates, the number entering 
the ministry, and the percentage of such to all others, in 
Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Brown, Columbia, Amherst, 



34 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

Again, the minister's competition has in- 
creased. The telegraph and the press report the 
world's happenings at the morrow's breakfast- 
table. The successful minister must adapt him- 
self to these new conditions. He can no longer 
be an educated giant among pigmies ; but the 
times demand for him an education which shall 
make him a respected leader among men. 
"Every church should be able to say to each 
sneering disciple of unchristian culture: 'My 
pastor is every way your peer' " (Bibliotheca 
Sacra, Vol. 36, p. 187). 

And finally, we note that with the changes 
mentioned, as regards the minister's relative po- 
sition in society, and with the minister's in- 

Oberlin and Wesleyan University, calculated for each dec- 
ade since the founding of these institutions down to 1870. 
The following are indicative: — 

Entered 

Years. Graduates, the Ministry. Per Cent. 

Harvard ...1642-1650 45 26 53.3 

1861-1870 997 67 6.7 

Yale 1702-1710 33 25 75.7 

1861-1870 1012 152 15 

Princeton ...1748-1760 161 80 50 

1861-1870 622 132 21.2 

Brown 1769-1780 60 21 35 

1861-1870 383 86 22.4 

Oberlin 1837-1840 56 37 66 

1861-1870 201 64 31.3 
Wesleyan 

University. 1833-1840 142 55 38.7 

1841-1850 363 102 28.1 

1851-1860 276 131 47.4 

1861-1870 263 123 46.8 



THE THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION 35 

creased and increasing competition, there are 
also greater demands made upon him than ever 
before. These are present-day demands, and to 
satisfy them the minister must have received a 
present-day education. In this relation presi- 
dent Eliot remarks : "There is no social prob- 
lem to-day, however difficult, upon which the 
minister is not expected to have his mind made 
up, and to be ready for action. Yet the evils to 
which these problems relate are extraordinarily 
complicated in their origin and development ; and 
the remedies for them are notoriously difficult 
to devise and apply, slow-working and hard to 
follow out in practical operation. Sentiment is 
a very unsafe guide in these matters; and the 
coolest philosopher, acquainted with political 
economy, medicine and the history of legislation 
on behalf of public morality, will be often at 
fault. All these difficulties which beset the 
minister of to-day are of recent origin; in this 
country they hardly antedate the present 
century." 

With these preconsiderations before us, we 
take up : 

II. A Representation of the Present State of 
Theological Education. In the following we 
give only the results of our investigation with- 
out discussion. For completeness of view we 
mention the Roman Catholic and Protestant 
State Church systems of ministerial education, 
and refer the curious to an article in the Metho- 



36 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

dist Quarterly Review for January, 1872, by 
Warren, entitled, "Two Systems of Ministerial 
Education ;" and to an article in the Contempor- 
ary Review for April, 1879, by Littledale, bear- 
ing the title, "The Professional Studies of the 
English Clergy." 

Little more than bare mention can be made of 
the Methodist system of Conference study, which 
was styled by Kidder as "A system of mini- 
sterial training or education in the ministry 
for the ministry." Probably no part of the 
Methodist economy has been more useful in giv- 
ing to Methodism unity and force for leadership 
than has its educational system. It is signifi- 
cant that the Congregational churches have re- 
cently adopted a plan involving the main 
features of the Methodist system of Conference 
study, as can be seen from "The Education for 
the Ministry," by Gillett, published by the Hart- 
ford Seminary Press. 

Confining ourselves now to a study of the 
Protestant churches of the United States, it is 
not too much to say that earnest thought is be- 
ing given to discover what is the theological 
education demanded by the times ; and great ef- 
forts are being made to provide just that educa- 
tion which will satisfy those demands. The 
problem is not an easy one, and its solution can 
be only relatively successful in any case. 

We have carefully examined the catalogues of 
the following theological schools, namely, Boston, 



THE THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION 37 

Drew, and Garrett (Methodist Episcopal) ; 
Princeton (Presbyterian) ; Rochester and South- 
ern Baptist (Baptist) ; General Theological, 
New York, and Episcopal Theological, Cam- 
bridge, Massachusetts (Episcopal) ; Oberlin, 
Bangor and Hartford (Congregational) ; Tufts 
(Universalist) ; Meadville (Unitarian) ; and 
Harvard (undenominational). We have tabu- 
lated the results under the following heads : ( 1 ) 
To whom open; (2) Kind of course; (8) 
Length of course; (4) Graduation. 

(1) With two exceptions (Meadville and 
Tufts) applicants for admission must be pro- 
fessing Christians, and in most cases they must 
be members of some church. One school (Gen- 
eral Theological Seminary, Episcopal) is open 
only to communicants of the Episcopal Church. 
Most of the schools are open only to candidates 
for the ministry, or to those preparing for some 
special form of Christian work. To admit 
others is exceptional. As to the admission of 
women, many of the catalogues are silent, though 
it is known that women are admitted to many of 
the schools on equal terms with men. Probably 
all the schools sometimes admit "special stu- 
dents," and likewise "graduate students." 

Individual schools make other minor conditions 
of admission, which we need not here detail. 

(2) The various curriculums may be classi- 
fied as follows: (a) In twelve schools the course 
is partly prescribed and partly elective; (b) In 



38 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

two schools (Harvard and Southern Baptist) 
the elective principle dominates. The trend is 
toward more electives. Ten years ago more than 
half of these schools offered only a prescribed 
course for candidates for graduation. More 
and more is afforded the opportunity for the in- 
dividual to perfect the peculiar gift which God 
gave him. The schools are alive to the demands 
of the age, as is seen by the new courses con- 
stantly added, such as religions, and religion in 
general, sociological studies, including missions, 
ethics, polity, administration, etc. 

(3) In every case the regular course contem- 
plates at least a three-years' period of study. 

(4) Most of the schools studied confer a the- 
ological degree upon those who complete the 
regular course, provided that they have before 
received the college degree of A.B., or its equiva- 
lent. 

There may now be offered for further con- 
sideration and conclusion of the whole matter: 

III. A Suggested Scheme of Theological 
Education in harmony with what is conceived to 
be the demand of the times. 

First, we are convinced that the best place to 
study theology is in a theological seminary 
which is in friendly alliance with a university. 
This university alliance is most important. 
Work elected in other departments by students 
in the seminary should be credited to the semi- 
nary degree, and vice versa. 



THE THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION 39 

Second, beneficiary funds should be carefully 
guarded and wisely bestowed. Young persons 
should not be bribed to enter the ministry, any 
more than they should be bribed to enter the pro- 
fessions. This cannot be too strongly insisted 
upon. And no conditions calculated in any 
way to hinder the free display of intellectual 
honesty in the future should be attached to any 
beneficiary endowments. We think this applies 
to the condition on which Methodist students in 
one of our best Methodist theological institutions 
are given "free" scholarships. We refer to the 
promise which Methodist students who receive 
such scholarships are required to make, not to 
enter the ministry of any other denomination 
"before, or within five years after," severing con- 
nection with the school, on pain of forfeiting 
$100, with interest, for each year of attendance 
at the school. We note also a semblance of con- 
straint in this matter, since it is not known by 
prospective students that such a promise is re- 
quired until after they are allowed to get on the 
grounds, without being advised by catalogue or 
otherwise that the acceptance of the "free" tui- 
tion, etc., will in any sense require a signing away 
of their moral freedom for the future. Even if 
such notice were inserted in the catalogue, yet 
the bestowment of beneficiary funds upon such 
conditions would be most impolitic, and far from 
complimentary to the great church under whose 
auspices this school has been endowed. These 



40 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

fearless times in which we live demand that the 
gospel minister shall not be subsidized; and cer- 
tainly the Methodist Church wants no one in her 
ministry who may, under any possible construc- 
tion, be held there on pain of forfeiting $300, or 
any part thereof, should he leave it for the 
ministry of some other denomination. 

Third, the course of study should be wholly 
elective. The studies offered for election should 
be determined with a view to their practical 
bearing, directly or indirectly, on the work of the 
ministry, by the same authorities who at present 
determine the scope and character of the required 
studies. 

Hebrew is already elective in some schools, and 
such opens the way to better results on the part 
of those who elect the study of Hebrew, since 
they are no longer hindered by those who have 
no talent for the study. To those who object 
that a knowledge of Hebrew is necessary to an 
understanding of the Jewish Scriptures, we re- 
ply that Old Testament theology can be nearly 
as effectively studied in English, and all the char- 
acteristic advantages of the historical method 
may be secured without a knowledge of the He- 
brew. Most ministers must take their Hebrew 
on authority anyhow, and it is a pity to compel 
every one to put in so much time only to secure 
such a smattering of Hebrew as will be of no 
practical use in the future. 

Theology is the science of God in all His 



THE THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION 41 

manifold manifestation. No one can master it 
all. The times demand that power shall be gen- 
erated in the theological school, not that a 
smattering of many things shall be taught. 

Fourth, opportunities for theological educa- 
tion should be provided for laymen. In ad- 
ministration laymen have been put forward. 
Why should they be excluded from theological 
training? We agree with Briggs, that "theo- 
logical education should be free, open to any 
man or woman who has sufficient elementary 
training to pursue these studies." 

We believe also that persons of good moral 
character, though non-Christian, should be ad- 
mitted to study in the theological schools. It 
was Jesus who said: "Ye shall know the truth, 
and the truth shall make you free." In these 
times the spirit of inquiry has become relent- 
lessly candid and fearless. The age no longer 
seeks for proof of foredrawn conclusions, but 
rather for the truth itself in the open field, re- 
gardless of consequences. Why should one who 
is earnest and who desires to study in a theolog- 
ical school be obliged to draw his main conclu- 
sion before entering upon his investigation? 
This age demands a theological education which 
is candid, fearless, honest, and open to all ear- 
nest men and women. 

We should not only grant, but insist, that 
the doors of the Christian ministry ought never 
to be opened to any but to the called of God. 



42 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

But the multitude of educated men and women 
who are now — largely because of the one-sided 
character of their education — indifferent to the 
church, should be given equal privileges with all 
others in the study of the great themes lying 
within the sphere of theological inquiry. 

Fifth, the theological degree should follow the 
completion of a three-years' course of approved 
elective study, but it should be conferred only 
upon those already having the collegiate degree 
of A.B., or its equivalent. 

Sixth, there should be opportunity for and 
recognition of post-graduate study. 

Seventh, those whose preparation or time pre- 
cludes the taking of a three-years' course, should 
be allowed to elect such studies for a shorter 
period as their time and preparation will per- 
mit. All "short course" students, as far as 
practicable, should be thrown with those taking 
the same studies even though in another course. 

Finally, the church itself — and this applies to 
any denomination — should forever continue to 
pronounce upon each candidate as to eligibility 
to orders. No one ought to be given the au- 
thority of a Christian church to conduct the 
offices of the ministry whom God has not called 
to that ministry. "No man taketh this honor 
unto himself, but he that is called of God, as was 
Aaron" (Heb. v, 4). The church is bound to 
hold and exercise the right, so far as its authority 
and sanction may extend, to pronounce upon the 



THE THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION 43 

evidence of genuineness of the alleged divine 
call. The candidate's personal religious creed 
and experience, besides his knowledge of and 
sympathy with the history, traditions and polity 
of the particular denomination, should be ex- 
amined into by the church, such being among 
the elements determining his fitness or unfitness 
for the work of the ministry in that church. In 
a course of theological studies open for election, 
provision should be made for those especially 
who wish to study the history, polity, etc., of 
the denomination to which the school is indebted 
for its existence. The proposition insisted upon 
is this, that the conditions of admission to the 
Christian ministry, and the conditions of ad- 
mission to a theological school, ought not to be 
the same. The church and the schools have 
largely erred in the past at this point. The 
theological schools ought not to be considered 
special guardians of denominational orthodoxy, 
and they can serve the church and humanity as 
well, and better, when all parties cease to expect 
them to be such. The doors of the theological 
school should be wide open; the doors of the 
Christian ministry should be well guarded. 



THE OPPORTUNITIES OF THE MINIS- 
TRY AS A LIFE WORK 

It is probably true that "No man is born into 
the world whose work is not born with him," but 
it is also true that for the proper life-work of 
every man there is opportunity ready-made, or 
which can be made, for its accomplishment. 

In the consideration of any suggested life- 
work for the doing of which there is little or no 
opportunity, ready-made or which can be made, 
one may put it down as sure that such is not 
one's work. When considering the question of a 
life-work, when trying to find out what God 
wants one to do as one's part in the world's 
work, as one's part with Him in the redeeming 
and perfecting of the race, it is perfectly proper 
to ask concerning the opportunities of any sug- 
gested field for labor. Opportunity plus need 
is the voice of God's order, and where opportu- 
nity is not, and can not be made, God does not 
command anyone there to work. Therefore it 
is proper that one should consider the opportu- 
nities of the ministry as a life-work. 

And be it noted first of all that every age has 

had its apostles of complaint and despair, and 

our age affords no exception. We have our 

apostles of hopeless atheism, such as Schopen- 

44 



MINISTRY'S OPPORTUNITIES 45 

hauer, whose highest message is pessimism and 
despair. 

Conditions could not be much worse than 
those anticipated by Paul in the first century. 
"For men," said he, "shall be lovers of their 
own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blas- 
phemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, un- 
holy, without natural affection, trucebreakers, 
false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of 
those that are good, traitors, heady, high-minded, 
lovers of pleasure more than lovers of God; 
having a form of godliness, but denying the 
power thereof. . . ." (2 Tim. iii, 2-5.) 
Even in our own day Dwight L. Moody said in 
the Independent of October 5th, 1893, that 
"there is every indication that the present dis- 
pensation will end in a great smash-up." All 
such pessimism is based on the assumption that 
the world is now waxing "worse and worse," that 
Protestantism is a failure, that Christianity is 
breaking down, and that the church as organ- 
ized in the world is losing ground, that the min- 
istry has lost its power and influence among 
men. A writer in the Atlantic Monthly said not 
very long ago: "The disintegration of religion 
has proceeded rapidly. . . . The church is 
now, for the most part, a depository of social 
rather than religious influences. Its chief force 
is no longer religious." There are indeed those 
who look back to the past for the golden age 
of the church, and these are they who always 



46 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

talk of the "good old days" of the church's his- 
tory. It may have been to one of these who be- 
lieved that the golden age of the church was 
past and that the door of opportunity was clos- 
ing to the Christian ministry and that the age 
of conquest was finished, to whom Whittier 
wrote : 

"Idly as thou, in that old day 

Thou mournest, did thy sire repine; 
So in his time, thy child grown gray 

Shall sigh for thine. 
But life shall on and upward go; 

The eternal step of progress beats 
To that grand anthem, calm and slow, 

Which God repeats. 

Wake then and watch ! The world is gray 
With morning light." 

In approaching the question of the ministry, 
and especially the opportunities of the ministry, 
as a life work, the proposition may be offered 
that there has never been a time when there was 
so much Christian faith among men as there 
is to-day; that Christianity is distinctly a grow- 
ing factor in the world's thought and life; that 
the conception of the sphere and activities of 
the church and of the ministry was never so 
wide as it is to-day; that the average Christian 
minister never stood more firmly and squarely 
upon the earth where men live, nor ever reached 



MINISTRY'S OPPORTUNITIES 47 

more nearly up to heaven into the immediate 
presence of God's throne than he does to-day. 

In the second place we must freely recognize 
that the minister's relative position in society 
has greatly changed during the recent decades. 
For a discussion of this changed relative posi- 
tion of the minister in society the reader is re- 
ferred to the preceding essay on the "Theological 
Education Demanded by the Times." We must 
freely admit important changes to have taken 
place in recent years in the relative position of 
the minister in society and also in the notable 
increase in the competition which the minister 
has to meet in the prosecution of his work. 

Other changes, which have an important bear- 
ing upon our inquiry, have also taken place in 
the prevailing notion of the ministry itself. But 
before considering these changes and their bear- 
ing upon the opportunities of the ministry our 
attention should be called to the fact that op- 
portunity is a notion largely relative to the in- 
dividual who is to consider it. What to one 
person would seem to constitute splendid op- 
portunity would seem to another person to af- 
ford no opportunity worth considering. In the 
weighing of any suggested opportunity not more 
depends upon objective conditions, involving as 
they do the field of possible action, than de- 
pends upon the one considering the question. 
And especially in estimating the opportunities 
of any field for a life-work as much will depend 



48 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

in the equation upon the subjective as upon the 
objective factors. The way in which any young 
man will view the opportunities of the ministry 
will ultimately be determined by what the young 
man himself is. The subjective factor will 
weigh more here than the objective to determine 
a young man's final view. How any young man 
shall view the opportunities of the ministry to- 
day will chiefly be determined, first, by that 
man's mental and moral attitude, by his estimate 
of life's primary and general mission and, sec- 
ondly, by his personal gifts, natural and ac- 
quired. 

If our thinking has been valid thus far we 
may now freely acknowledge that times have 
greatly changed and that these changes have been 
such as to affect greatly the character of the min- 
istry as a profession, and also to modify greatly 
the opportunities which the ministry offers to 
young men about to enter upon a life-work. 

But we shall have to insist in the third place 
that these changes which have taken place in 
business, which have revolutionized educational 
ideals and methods, which have democratized so- 
cial ideals, which have discovered to mankind the 
worlds of science, and which have so completely 
mellowed, moralized and vitalized philosophy and 
theology — we shall have to insist that these 
changes have been such in practically every field 
as to widen and make more important the op- 
portunities of the Christian ministry as a life- 



MINISTRY'S OPPORTUNITIES 49 

work for one who desires nothing so much as 
to be of service to humanity, to be free to think 
and speak and act, and to grow in wisdom and 
true goodness. 

It is the author's conviction that the rational 
warrant for religion was never so widely recog- 
nized as it is to-day. 

One important mission of the Christian min- 
ister of to-day is the popularization of the truth 
respecting God and theology, as thus conceived. 

If one desires financial riches above all else, 
the ministry is not for him. The salary of the 
average Christian minister is not equal to that 
of an average skilled mechanic. If the objects 
of life are to be wealth, or fame, political power, 
glory, ease or self-indulgence, then the opportu- 
nities of the ministry will not be worth consider- 
ing. If, on the other hand, the attainment of 
the higher satisfactions is to be the object of 
life; if one desires to be of service, to be free 
in the freedom of truth wherewith Christ makes 
free, and continually to grow, then the opportu- 
nities of the ministry are at least equal to those 
of any other calling, and in definite particulars 
are such as to demand careful thought from 
every Christian and especially from every edu- 
cated young man. 

Does a young man really want to live a life 
of service? How can he more directly serve this 
age than by a manifestation, in the face of com- 
mercialism, of real hungering, not after money, 



50 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

but after righteousness and the rule of God in 
the business of men? There is certainly need 
to-day for men who are willing to serve their 
age like that. 

Religion is the most universal interest in life. 
And the Christian minister is set to be a prophet 
of religion. It is the minister's opportunity to 
listen to the voices of the spirit and then to 
prophesy to men. Two and three times or more 
every week the minister has an opportunity of 
speaking out of his inmost thinking to at least 
a few of the most earnest minded people in the 
community, the deepest message God has been 
able to give him. Many who ought to be 
prophets are too hard of hearing and unwilling 
themselves, and God can not send them, but there 
are abundant opportunities to prophesy for 
those who are equipped and willing to be sent. 

Can you and I doubt that there are really 
splendid opportunities to-day for those who are 
qualified to teach the ideas of Jesus? Men were 
never more weary with the world than now and 
they desire someone who can tell them about 
true rest. Men were never more hungry than 
now for some word from the unseen. If true 
prophets will not go, then the people will listen 
to the false prophets. 

In every age the true regenerators of society 
have been the prophets of God. They have fol- 
lowed inspirations which were breathed upon 
them from the unseen world. They have builded 



MINISTRY'S OPPORTUNITIES 51 

better than they knew because they have been 
true in the delivery of a message the full mean- 
ing of whose contents they did not know. They 
have slowly, surely, transformed the lives, the 
thoughts, the ideals, the loves, the hates of men. 
Christian ministers have told the beauties of di- 
vine fatherhood and human brotherhood and hu- 
man slavery has become hateful in the sight of 
men. They must proclaim the horrors and sel- 
fishness of the liquor traffic, its waste and wicked- 
ness, its greed and cruelty, until men will wonder 
after awhile that the civilized world could have 
ever tolerated such an unmitigated curse. 

The Christian minister must continue to 
prophesy the wrath of God against lust and social 
impurity until men everywhere shall revolt from 
such supreme selfishness and shall come to hate 
such treason and disloyalty against their fellow 
members in the family of God, and shall effectu- 
ally resolve no longer to desecrate these bodies, 
which God has intended to be fit temples of truth, 
with such vileness. 

In an age of commercialism the preacher must 
exalt the true riches ; against greed he must warn 
and protect the poor. He must everywhere 
warn and counsel and summon men to seek first 
the things that have eternal significance. 

Upon the surface of things there have been 
indeed great changes but the fundamental needs 
of humanity are now about what they were in 
the day of Plato and Socrates and Paul. 



52 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

The Kingdom of God never comes with ob- 
servation. The real coming of social reform is 
not with blare of trumpets. There are great 
opportunities for all men, who want a part with 
Jesus in the renewing and redeeming of men, 
in the work of the ministry. In the purifying 
of society the minister works from within. The 
biggest opportunities are unknown to large num- 
bers of the people and most important results 
are unheralded. Quietly, steadily, the work 
goes on. The work of the Christian ministry is 
done without observation. A prize fight is 
heralded. The man who steals a million dollars 
is famous, even if not infamous. But the man 
who turns a sinner from the error of his way 
or who plans for the salvation of a race surely 
and wisely may die unknown. But the work 
goes on. As never before the world is open to 
the coming of the well-trained and thoroughly 
consecrated Christian ministry, and the rewards 
are according to the work, and every man shall 
have his reward. 



VI 

A STUDY OF DOCTRINES 

Any candid discussion of doctrines to-day 
ought to prove clarifier and corrective of the 
views of many Christians without seeming unin- 
teresting or provincial to the general reader. It 
is believed that no greater lack is seen to-day in 
both the general and special study of doctrines 
than in the all too prevalent want of perspective. 
Modern men are learning to regard truth every- 
where with a view to right perspective, and as 
a result scientific, political, social and religious 
doctrines are coming to be better understood as 
to their real worth, as to their inherent limita- 
tions and possible dangers when over-magnified, 
and as to their practical importance when viewed 
as the formulated results of past thinking. It 
is to be hoped that both our general and special 
study of doctrines will more and more free us 
from any provincializing and blighting bondage 
to the thinking of the past generations, while at 
the same time fortifying us against the opposite 
error of ignoring these formulated results of 
past thinking. We must learn that doctrines are 
made for man and not man for doctrines. Doc- 
trines are to be our servants, not our masters. 
The present study is an essay, therefore, toward 
the wider realization of the true nature of and 
53 



54 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

really practical importance of doctrines as set- 
ting forth the formulated results of the thinking 
of the past for our instruction and counsel. 

Contrary to a somewhat prevalent opinion, 
most of the Christian denominations had their 
origin in a revival rather than in the preaching 
of some new doctrine or doctrines. For exam- 
ple, Methodism has not nor did it ever have any 
doctrines which may not also be Congregation- 
alist or Episcopalian. The Wesleys and their 
followers have recognized the importance of or- 
ganization and the significance of doctrinal state- 
ments. But when the Methodist Episcopal 
Church was organized it was given "Articles of 
Religion" which were condensed for the purpose 
from the Articles of the Church of England. 
And to-day the Methodist Episcopal Church has 
no official statement of doctrines except this, 
which was borrowed ready-made from the Church 
of England, and then cut down for the use of 
the new church in America. The founders of 
the movement well understood that they were not 
called to bring any new doctrines but rather to 
vitalize those which already were; the objective 
was life, not doctrine. 

Particular attention is called to the point just 
mentioned, for it is here that many have erred. 
Danger lies in either one of two directions. 
Some, forgetting this, have so emphasized the im- 
portance of certain doctrines as almost to make 
void the grace of God. Others have so depre- 



A STUDY OF DOCTRINES 55 

ciated all doctrines as almost to deprive any who 
would follow them of all the benefits of the 
world's past thinking. The great Christian 
doctrines are the formulated conclusions of gen- 
erations of honest minds who have thought upon 
great themes. 

That the church has accomplished far less for 
good than it might have accomplished, and far 
less than its sincere followers have wished that 
it should accomplish during the centuries, has 
been without doubt largely owing to a failure to 
present the good news that "God was in Christ 
reconciling the world unto himself" with true 
perspective. Many a time in emphasizing some 
formulated statement of opinion respecting some 
speculative or even metaphysical problem which 
lay far from the realm of common life and duty, 
zealous Christians have fought one another, 
tearing "the body of Christ, which is the 
church," and hiding, instead of revealing, the 
grace of God to the world. One manifest pur- 
pose of God in Christ was to reveal Himself to 
His children as full of love and grace. But it is 
an historic fact that many times by an exag- 
gerated stress placed upon doctrines this very 
love and grace of the Father has been made of 
none effect. 

We present, therefore, as the first proposition 
requisite to a proper study of doctrines the fol- 
lowing, negative in form but positive in teach- 
ing: 



56 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

No doctrine should ever be so em- 
phasized as to raise in any mind the 
idea that it is ever to be believed as 
itself the object of our faith. We 
must not permit our emphasis upon or 
the acceptance of any doctrine to con- 
dition or make void the grace of God 
revealed in Jesus Christ. 

The history of the church through the cen- 
turies furnishes a sad commentary upon the all 
too general mistake of over-emphasizing and of 
unduly exalting doctrines. And yet the oppo- 
site extreme is also to be avoided. There have 
been, and are, those who have been so indifferent 
to doctrines that they would pass without con- 
sideration the creeds and dogmas which repre- 
sent the best thinking of the best minds in all 
ages of the church. So to ignore the past is, 
when rightly understood, to stand for the bald- 
est egotism. No one but an egotistic individual- 
ist would deny, if he rightly understood himself, 
the importance of clear thought and definite and 
comprehensive statement, or the value to all 
humble seekers for the truth of the great doc- 
trines thought out and profoundly stated by the 
fathers. 

I present, therefore, as the second proposition 
requisite to a proper understanding of the sub- 
ject under discussion, the following, which lies 
over against the first: 



A STUDY OF DOCTRINES 57 

No doctrine should be so depreciated 
as to lead any mind so to ignore it as 
to be deprived thereby of the strength- 
giving, safeguarding and fortifying 
benefits which come to everyone from 
the thinking of the past. 

It should be remembered that no man lives to 
himself alone, and no man thinks to himself 
alone. Everyone owes it to himself, and to the 
family of God on earth, that he should place 
himself firmly and intelligently on the definite 
and formulated results of past inquiry, if so be 
he may climb therefrom to the nobler heights 
beyond. 

Being upon our guard, then, against the 
danger either of over-emphasizing doctrines, 
upon the one hand, or of unduly depreciating 
them, upon the other, we come now to the very 
important question: What doctrines, if any, 
need to be emphasized to-day? If we have rea- 
soned correctly thus far, the question which we 
now consider is very largely one of perspective. 
We have already said that the church has accom- 
plished far less for good than it might have ac- 
complished, and far less than its sincere follow- 
ers have wished that it should accomplish during 
the centuries, without doubt largely because of 
failure to present the good news that "God was 
in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself," 
with due regard to perspective. And, as noted 



58 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

by Samuel G. Green, "The perspective of truth 
continually changes." This matter of present- 
day perspective should determine for us what 
doctrines in any period most need to be empha- 
sized. 

It should be here noted that no sure standard 
can be laid down for different minds or for 
different periods. Green's words are again rel- 
evant. Speaking of beliefs which underlie doc- 
trines, he says: "Such beliefs will be held with 
the very varying strength of conviction and 
sense of their relative value to the religious life. 
Certain of these beliefs will appear of more im- 
portance than others ; and this comparative esti- 
mate, again, will vary in different minds." 

Having regard, therefore, to this matter of 
perspective, I present as my third and positive 
proposition the following: 

Those doctrines most need to be em- 
phasized to-day which stand most 
closely related to the great subject of 
the gospel, the restoration of prodigals 
to the Father; which are, in other 
words, in nearest identity to our God- 
given "ministry of reconciliation; to 
wit, that God was in Christ reconciling 
the world unto himself" (2 Cor. v, 18, 
19). 

Finally, having regard to this matter of per- 
spective, and believing that so are correctly in- 



A STUDY OF DOCTRINES 59 

terpreted the needs of our age, I am, therefore, 
convinced that of the many great and true doc- 
trines, none of which should be depreciated, and 
all of which should be preached, and above all 
should they be explained line upon line and pre- 
cept upon precept, there are, however, three 
which need specially to be emphasized to-day. 

Since it holds nearest identity to our God- 
given "ministry of reconciliation," I would first 
of all emphasize the great Christian doctrine of 
Christ, as the divine Son of God, in whom and 
by whom has been revealed the gracious and 
loving purpose of God the Father "that whoso- 
ever believeth in Him should not perish, but have 
everlasting life." With the Apostle I would 
declare before all: "If any man is in Christ, he 
is a new creature; the old things are passed 
away; behold, they are become new. But all 
things are of God, who reconciled us to himself 
through Christ, and gave unto us the ministry 
of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ 
reconciling the world unto himself, not reckon- 
ing unto them their trespasses, and having com- 
mitted unto us the word of reconciliation. We 
are ambassadors therefore on behalf of Christ, 
as though God were entreating by us: We be- 
seech you on behalf of Christ, be ye reconciled 
to God" (2 Cor. v, 17-20). I would declare 
the unwillingness of God and Christ that any 
should perish, "That in all things God may be 
glorified through Jesus Christ" (1 Peter iv, 11). 



60 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

In the second place, I would emphasize the 
doctrine of faith. The writer in the letter to 
the Hebrews, xi, 1, has given a definition of faith. 
By the aid of a parenthetical suggestion found 
in Thayer's Lexicon, page 202, under the word 
elegkos one may easily derive this translation of 
that verse: "Now faith is firm trust in things 
hoped for, the inwrought conviction resulting 
from the proving of things in the realm of the 
unseen." Faith may undoubtedly run beyond 
reason but it can not run at all without reason. 
The faith which the philosophical writer of the 
letter to the Hebrews had in mind was something 
more than mere credulity. In his mind faith 
was something based upon the most rational 
proof. Now a man's faith is the measure of his 
power to receive. Faith is the universal and all- 
essential condition upon which whosoever will 
may avail himself of the gracious benefits of God 
in Jesus Christ, and without which no one can 
be helped by any of those benefits. "For by 
grace are ye saved through faith" (Eph. ii, 8). 
"For I am not ashamed of the gospel: for it 
is the power of God unto salvation to everyone 
that believeth. . . . For therein is revealed 
a righteousness of God from faith unto faith: 
as it is written, but the righteous shall live by 
faith" (Rom. i, 16, 17). 

And in the third place, I would specially em- 
phasize the doctrine of assurance. People are 
everywhere longing for the sense of filial rela- 



A STUDY OF DOCTRINES 61 

tionship with the Father such as will make them 
feel at all times at home in their Father's world. 
They need to be instructed how they may know 
that they are "in Christ." More than a repeat- 
ing of the words of the eighth chapter of the 
letter to the Romans is necessary; the words 
must be explained. I thoroughly believe in the 
desire of God the Father that every soul should 
enjoy a conscious filial relationship with Him. 
I further believe that it is the privilege of all 
properly instructed souls thus consciously to 
know the Father. Christ needs witnesses to the 
efficacy of divine grace through faith to bring 
life and peace and reconciliation with the Father. 
This doctrine of assurance, or the witness of the 
spirit, needs to be taught and explained and em- 
phasized to-day to the end that more Christians 
shall know whom they have believed, that so they 
may stand as sure, steady and unfailing wit- 
nesses before a wide world of theoretical agnos- 
ticism, and that which is too often actual con- 
fusion, if not practical atheism. 



vn 

A GROUP OF STUDIES OF THE LIFE 
AND TIMES OF JESUS 

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS. 

The reader is asked to consider four reasons 
why all persons should at this time give earnest 
study to the life and times of Jesus, namely, 
to understand the spirit of our own age; in 
order to know the man, the human Jesus ; in 
order thereby to know that which could not 
otherwise be known about God; in order by vir- 
tue of that knowledge to have eternal life. 

First, it is confidently asserted that without 
a knowledge of the man, the human Jesus, one 
can not understand that which is deeply charac- 
teristic of the spirit of our age. Ours is a 
Christ-ward age. It is marked by a profound 
interest in everything pertaining to the earthly 
life of Jesus who was called Christ. We have 
seen a list of more than five hundred biographies 
of Jesus. Books are written and published to 
satisfy a demand. And the people of to-day are 
eager for anything that will make Jesus better 
known. 

A great host of young people are to-day 

pledged for "Christ and the Church," and in 

that motto "Christ" always goes before the 

"Church." The eyes of the toilers are turned 

62 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 63 

toward Jesus to-day as never before, — except, 
perhaps, when, 'tis said, the "common people 
heard him gladly" in Galilee. Certainly all 
parents, students in our schools, and all others, 
who wish in the best sense to be abreast of the 
time, must not know more of Alexander or 
Cassar than they do of him whose life and teach- 
ing have made our twentieth century civilization, 
and especially its spirit, possible. 

A second reason for the present study is that 
so we may know the human teacher and leader 
of men, the man, Jesus, whose relations with the 
people of his time were most interesting, and 
who was universally acknowledged to be a very 
remarkable person. There have been those who 
have sought to exalt Christian ideas independ- 
ently of their historic setting. But Christian 
ideas can not be known without a knowledge of 
Jesus. One of the six principles on which F. W. 
Robertson based his teaching was "that belief in 
the human character of Christ's humanity must 
be antecedent to belief in his divine origin." 

We should then, in the third place, study the 
life and times of the Man of Galilee in order 
to know that which could not otherwise be 
known about God. "If ye knew me, ye would 
know my Father also." Jesus said to Philip, 
"He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 
But the world does not yet know Jesus as it 
ought to know him, and therefore God is not 
yet known as He ought to be known. From the 



64. KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

broken cisterns of the world's best thinking, men 
are turning unto Jesus that they may find the 
springs of living water in the mountains of God. 
Year by year Jesus is proving to have been the 
most adequate revelation of God that the world 
has seen, full of grace and truth. 

To know Jesus is to know the best that 
mortals can know of God. Then should men 
study to know Jesus in all his works and ways, 
for this is to be forever alive unto the highest 
and the best, that is, alive unto God, that is, 
to know God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent ; 
and this is eternal life (John xvii, 3). It omens 
well for the future of the ethical life of the race 
when men give themselves to a thorough study 
of the life and times of Jesus. 

THE NATION AND THE TIMES OF JESUS. 

To understand thoroughly the life and person- 
ality of any historical character it is necessary 
to study the age in which the person lived. 
What were the social, political and religious 
stimuli that pushed him on and made the 
manner of his life what it was? In such facts 
will be found the key to the interpretation of 
much in any life that would otherwise be un- 
explained and unexplainable. So may we be 
greatly aided in the discovery of the true sig- 
nificance of the life to be studied. This is not 
less true of the study of Jesus than it is of Paul 
or Luther or Wesley. It is true, no doubt in 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 65 

a sense, that God is not coerced in His working 
by the ordinary course of human society, and 
yet it is also true that the career of Jesus among 
men during his "humiliation" was practically de- 
termined by the nation and the times in which 
he lived. 

A student of the life of Jesus should know the 
nation and the times (1) politically, (2) so- 
cially, (3) religiously. He should have in mind 
the story of the nation from the beginning of 
exile to the national downfall. He should have 
in mind the end of the Northern Kingdom in 
B.C. 722; the carrying of the Southern King- 
dom into Babylonian exile B.C. 588; the over- 
throw of the Babylonian Kingdom by Persia 
B.C. 538; the return of the Jews by permission 
of Cyrus B.C. 536; the origin of the Book of 
Malachi about B.C. 442-432; the subjugation by 
Alexander B.C. 332; the death of Alexander 
B.C. 323; the attachment of Judea and Samaria 
to Egypt B.C. 301 ; the passing of Judea and 
Samaria to the throne of Syria, upon which sat 
Antiochus, the great, B.C. 198; the desecration 
of the Temple at Jerusalem B.C. 168; the 
cleansing of the Temple and the Feast of Dedi- 
cation B.C. 165 ; the gaining of complete inde- 
pendence by the Jewish nation B.C. 128; the 
passing of Judea under Rome B.C. 63; and the 
reign of the Vassal King Herod B.C. 37-4. On 
the death of Herod, who was reigning when 
Jesus was born, the kingdom was divided among 



66 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

his three sons. Archelaus became Ethnarch of 
Judea, Samaria and Idumea. Herod Antipas 
became Tetrarch of Galilee and Perea. Philip 
became Tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis. 

Socially, the Jews were proud of their history, 
their great men, their Temple, their special rela- 
tion to Jehovah. They were proud in defeat 
not much less than in victory. In the period 
from the exile to the advent of Jesus the Jews 
had learned much of the world and the world 
had learned much of the Jews. If we would 
know the Jew socially in the world at the time 
we study, we shall have to visit him in all the 
chief cities of eastern civilization; we shall have 
to speak with him in many languages and dia- 
lects ; we shall find him in as widely scattered 
districts as Rome and Babylon, Egypt and 
Greece. A few years later, on the celebration of 
the feast of Pentecost we find "at Jerusalem 
Jews, devout men, out of every nation under 
heaven." And the author of the book of Acts 
enumerates among those present "Parthians and 
Medes and Elamites, and the dwellers in Meso- 
potamia, in Judea and Cappadocia, in Pontus 
and Asia, in Phrygia and Pamphylia, in Egypt 
and the parts of Libya about Cyrene, and so- 
journers from Rome, both Jews and proselytes, 
Cretans and Arabians." Thus while at home 
politically the Jews had become the dwellers of 
an insignificant province under the government 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 67 

of Rome, socially their influence had never 
reached farther than it did when "in the fullness 
of time" Jesus was born. 

Further, the student should become familiar 
with the state of the nation and the times re- 
ligiously. It must be recognized that there was 
a widespread decay of true religion throughout 
the Roman Empire, and even among the Jews, 
coupled with an extreme legalistic religiousness. 
On the other hand many weary ones were keep- 
ing fresh the memory of the old prophecies and 
anxiously looking for the coming of the Mes- 
sianic King who should deliver them from all 
their burdens. 

We will no more than mention here the great 
political, social and religious parties which 
flourished in the time of Jesus. A student of 
the times at the beginning of our era ought to 
make himself familiar with the tenets and charac- 
ter of the Pharisees, the orthodox legalistic 
religionists of the time; the Sadducees, the 
coldly rationalistic high-priestly party and 
their adherents ; and the Essenes, the saintly 
party of Come-outers, liberty-loving and right- 
eous. 

Finally, it should be fully understood that for 
the Jewish race, when the bond of national in- 
dependence gave way, the unfailing hope of a 
coming Messiah became the strongest unifying 
agency among all the descendents of Abraham. 



68 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

THE BIRTH AND INFANCY OF JESUS. 

About the middle of the eighth century after 
the founding of Rome there was hidden up in the 
hills of Galilee a small town containing possibly 
a population of two thousand people. The 
houses were queer shaped, flat-roofed buildings. 
There was a strange confusion of houses, thresh- 
ing-floors and wine-presses. These were ar- 
ranged in terraces irregularly set in the am- 
phitheater-shaped hillside upon which the town 
was built. This was Nazareth, and it was not 
much different morally or religiously from the 
average village of Galilee, in spite of the ques- 
tion of Nathanael, "Can any good thing come 
out of Nazareth?" 

Nazareth was not a secluded place. One of 
the three caravan routes from Acco to Damascus 
passed through it. And Edersheim says: 
"Nazareth was also one of the great centers of 
Jewish Temple-life." It was in such a village 
that we read of Jesus that "the child grew, and 
waxed strong, filled with wisdom; and the grace 
of God was upon him." 

Of the family of Jesus we know very little, 
and beyond the brief lines which we have in our 
gospels we know nothing of Joseph or Mary. 
We have given certain facts which are necessary 
for the gospel history and that is all. 

When we open a biography of Lincoln or 
Grant or any other man of modern times we 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 69 

expect to find many questions answered which, 
as we take up the study of Jesus, we shall find 
not even raised. Our gospels are strangely 
silent upon the details of the life of Jesus. But 
the same may be said of the authoritative biog- 
raphies of such ancient men as Isaiah, Judas 
Maccabeus, Socrates or Plato. If we seek the 
reason for this we shall find it in the changed 
conditions of the age. In our day the printing 
press has made book-making rapid and easy. 
Steam and electricity have wrought a like change 
for book circulation. Ours is an age of cheap 
literature and universal reading. Men now 
write not so much because they have a message 
which must be delivered, but rather because there 
is money in it. Now the histories of Jesus were 
not written for that purpose. They were not 
written in response to the cry for "copy." 
Therefore we should hold two facts in mind when 
we study the life of Jesus and especially when 
we study the early life of Jesus. First, we 
should remember that any limitation or barren- 
ness of detail, which we meet in the gospel nar- 
ratives of Jesus, will be found paralleled in the 
records of any other great character of ancient 
times. No authentic biography of any ancient 
character can match for curiosity-satisfying 
minuteness our modern histories. And if we 
should find in opposition to this universal rule 
that the biographers of Jesus had made an ex- 
ception, that alone would serve to raise in us sus- 



70 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

picion of the whole. Even so, curiosity was not 
wanting in those olden times. Details which 
were made for the sake of wonder and curiosity 
may be found in abundance in the Apocryphal 
gospels, of which the so-called Gospel of Thomas 
is a good illustration. Cowper in his transla- 
tion of the Apocryphal gospels, says of the 
Gospel of Thomas, "It may be viewed as a col- 
lection of foolish traditions, or fables, invented 
to supply an account of that period in our 
Lord's history, respecting which the genuine 
gospels are silent" (188f). 

We should also remember a second fact when 
we turn to the study of the life of Jesus and 
find ourselves perplexed by the scantiness of the 
details given. The fact is that the design of 
the writers was manifestly other than to gratify 
mere curiosity. Speaking of "The Holy Fam- 
ily" Edersheim says: "We feel that the scanti- 
ness of particulars here supplied by the gospels, 
was intended to prevent the human interest from 
overshadowing the grand central fact, to which 
alone attention was to be directed. For, the 
design of the gospels was manifestly not to 
furnish a biography of Jesus the Messiah, but, 
in organic connection with the Old Testament, 
to tell the history of the long-promised estab- 
lishment of the kingdom of God upon earth." 
The biography in the gospels is an incident, 
though a necessary one. The mere writing of 
biography was not the object which the writers 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 71 

set before themselves, but was only an incident 
involved in the attainment of their real object, 
which was two-fold, namely, that others might 
know and believe the gospel message, and that 
thus believing they might have life "in his name." 
Read again the preface to Luke's Gospel, chap- 
ter i, 1-4. Luke says he writes to Theophilus 
(the Gospel is addressed to Theophilus), that he 
might "know the certainty concerning the things 
wherein thou wast instructed." John states that 
his object in writing his Gospel narrative, as 
recorded in John xx, 30, 31, is "that ye may 
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; 
and that believing ye may have life in his name." 

And yet, what scanty details we have! How 
much more complete we think we would have 
made it all! But who shall say that we have 
not all the details which are in any wise neces- 
sary to the true object of the Gospel narratives? 
What we have is sufficient to span all eternity. 
That marvelous prologue of John's Gospel 
sweeps all eternity that is past. Read again 
John i, 1-18, which opens with majesty: "In 
the beginning was the Word." The twenty-fifth 
chapter of Matthew opens up the vision of 
judgment, and the last verse of the chapter looks 
forward through eternity. 

Of Joseph and Mary we have the genealogies 
recorded by Matthew and Luke. And there are 
hints that render it well-nigh certain that both 
Joseph and Mary were in the line of descent 



72 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

from David. And therefore when the census 
was taken, of which Luke tells us in the second 
chapter of his Gospel, "all went to enroll them- 
selves, everyone to his own city. And Joseph 
also went up from Galilee, out of the city of 
Nazareth, into Judea, to the city of David, which 
is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house 
and family of David; to enroll himself with 
Mary, who was betrothed to him, being great 
with child." And so it came to pass that Jesus 
was born in Bethlehem. 

Two of the Gospel writers tell us that Jesus 
was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of 
the Virgin Mary. These writers are explicit 
upon this point. They state it as a fact. No 
doctrine is based upon the statement in these 
Gospels however nor is it anywhere else men- 
tioned in the New Testament. We may also be 
reminded that there is really no more mystery 
involved in the miraculous conception of Jesus 
than there is in the beginning of every human 
life. Speaking of this part of the record Doc- 
tor C. W. Rishell said in the writer's hearing: 
"There the Virgin Birth is not made the basis 
of an argument for the divine nature of Jesus. 
We shall search in vain in The Gospels which 
record it for any such application of it. It is 
stated there as a fact but no conclusion of 
any kind, is drawn from or intimated in connec- 
tion with it. Nor is the fact mentioned or im- 
plied or referred to in any other portion of 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 73 

the New Testament. Paul and John, who so 
strongly emphasized the deity of Christ, do not 
argue that deity from the Virgin Birth. This 
does not destroy the fact of his miraculous con- 
ception, but it shows us that the writers of the 
New Testament laid no stress upon it. If Jesus 
was literally conceived by the Holy Ghost and 
born of the Virgin Mary he undoubtedly had a 
divine element in his nature. If, as some think, 
it is not to be taken literally, that divine element 
would not be thereby disproved." 

When Jesus was eight days old he was cir- 
cumcised according to Jewish law and christened, 
receiving the name of Jesus. And then being 
the first born son he was presented in due time 
in the Temple to be "redeemed" of the priest. 
This must have been at least thirty-one days 
after birth, and the price of redemption was five 
shekels, sanctuary money. The mother could 
not present herself for the rite of "purification" 
until forty-one days after the birth of a son, or 
eighty-one days after the birth of a daughter. 
In the case of Jesus it is probable that both 
rites were performed at the same visit to the 
temple. 

Then came the Magi or wise men from the 
East. Of these men we know very little. We 
do not know when they came, nor do we even 
know how many of them there were. To our 
curiosity-driven minds the records are provok- 
ingly brief. We read of Herod's craftiness and 



74 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

of his senseless and cruel murder of the children 
of Bethlehem "from two years old and under." 
It was because of Herod that the "Holy Family" 
fled to Egypt. When Herod died Joseph and 
Mary and the child returned, but, learning that 
Archelaus was Herod's successor, they withdrew 
into Galilee "and came and dwelt in a city called 
Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was 
spoken by the prophets, that he should be called 
a Nazarene." And "the child grew, and waxed 
strong, filled with wisdom ; and the grace of God 
was upon him." Then it was that the Sun of 
Righteousness was rising in the eastern sky. 
Then it was that the Light of the World was 
dawning. We now believe that that Sun of 
Righteousness was none other than the Eter- 
nal Son of God. That Babe of Bethlehem was 
to be the Light of the World, the Sinless Man, 
the Christ of God come to earth for men. 

THE CHILDHOOD HOME AND SCHOOL LIFE OF 

JESUS. 

We have no detailed description of the home 
in which Jesus lived, nor of his school-life. We 
do know, however, how most of the people of 
Nazareth lived, and what in general was the 
education given to the child of the average Jew- 
ish parents. We have besides a few marks which 
will help us to a good idea of what the home and 
school-life of Jesus must have been. 

The house was, no doubt, square and low, and 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 75 

it had no windows ; the door was relied upon for 
light and ventilation. There was, probably, 
only one room, though it may possibly have 
been an exception to the rule, and have had two, 
or even three rooms. There were no tables and 
little furniture of any kind* There would be 
a few rugs on the floor, and a few garments hung 
on the walls. 

The family which lived in this house was 
numerous, consisting of Joseph and Mary, five 
sons and at least two daughters — in Mark vi, 3, 
reference is made to the "sisters" of Jesus. 
The boys were Jesus, James, Joseph, Jude and 
Simon. 

Among the household utensils would, no doubt, 
be a lamp, a broom, a "bushel" and a mill. The 
bushel turned bottom up would serve as table. 
Chairs would not be needed around that table. 
The mill was a hand affair, and Mary and her 
daughters every morning ground the meal needed 
for the day. The principal meal was at noon. 
Before sitting down all washed or purified their 
hands, which was a religious ceremony. Fol- 
lowing the custom of the age, Joseph would 
give thanks, and Jesus, as the oldest son, when 
a young man, would offer brief prayer. The 
meal though simple would be substantial. But- 
ter, cheese, honey and parched corn no doubt 
were there. Sometimes grapes, figs, locusts and 
meat would be found on the list. They did not 
suffer want in that home. The necessities of 



76 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

life are largely relative, and their requirements 
were few. 

As soon as Jesus could speak, his mother 
taught him verses of the Bible, else he was a 
much neglected child among Jewish children, and 
we know he was not neglected. She first taught 
him Deut. vi, 4, 5 : "Hear, O Israel : Jehovah our 
God is one Jehovah : and Thou shalt love Jehovah 
Thy God with all Thy soul, and with all Thy 
might." With this proclamation of the unity of 
God, she also taught Him the special relation of 
the children of Israel to God, Deut. vii, 7 : "Jeho- 
vah did not set his love upon you, nor choose 
you, because ye were more in number than any 
people; for ye were the fewest of all peoples: 
but because Jehovah loveth you." 

The family of Jesus were strict Jews. Joseph 
and Mary were in the habit of going regularly 
to Jerusalem to the feast of the Passover. 
James was always, even after becoming a 
Christian, a strict Jew. Professor Stapfer sug- 
gests that "the piety of Jesus was no doubt of 
another character; and therefore, it early began 
to distress his mother and brothers. The day 
was to come when they would try to hold him 
back, to keep him with them; would even go so 
far as to suspect him of insanity." 

Jesus no doubt was sent to school when he 
was six years old. The audience-room of the 
synagogue was the place in small villages where 
the school was held; in larger towns the school 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 77 

was held in a separate building. Here Jesus 
attended school until he was ten or twelve years 
old. Here he learned to read, write and figure. 
At the close of this period he in a sense came 
to his majority. He became a "son of the law;" 
that is, subject to the discipline of the law. 
Like all the other Jews of Palestine, Jesus prob- 
ably morning and evening repeated the "Shema" 
as the faithful Roman Catholic tells her beads. 
The Shema included nineteen verses — Deut. vi, 
4-9; xi, 13-21; Num. xv, 37-41. Later Jesus 
would characterize much of this as "Vain repeti- 
tions." 

On Saturday (the Jewish Sabbath) Jesus 
would be sent to the special children's service 
at the synagogue. 

"Such," says Stapfer, "was the placid and 
humble childhood of him who holds the first place 
in the history of humanity, and who has exer- 
cised a decisive influence upon the destinies of 
the world ; of him whose work is, without contra- 
diction, the most remarkable the annals of the 
past have bequeathed to our meditation; and 
whose life divides the history of our race into 
two parts which nothing can ever blend to- 
gether." 

The books of the period, together with a study 
of persons contemporary with Jesus, will show 
us fairly well what the child Jesus was taught to 
believe. Jesus and James were undoubtedly 
educated alike. They probably went to school 



78 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

together, learned the stories of Jewish history 
together, and in James, the strict Jew, ascetic 
and austere, pious, temperate and righteous, we 
no doubt have the ripe, natural product of the 
teaching and training which the two brothers had 
together. 

"the eighteen silent years." 

Only forty words are devoted by the author 
of our third Gospel to direct biographical state- 
ment concerning the life of Jesus during those 
years which intervened between his visit to Jeru- 
salem at the age of twelve and the opening of 
his public ministry at the age of thirty: "And 
he went down with them, and came to Nazareth; 
and he was subject unto them: and his mother 
kept all these sayings in her heart. And Jesus 
advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor 
with God and men" (Luke ii, 51, 52). The 
years in the life of Jesus from twelve to thirty 
have been known* therefore, as "the eighteen 
silent years." And yet many authentic hints 
have come down to us out of which may be 
gathered the sure outline even of those years. 

Jesus was a carpenter. This we infer with 
practical certainty from Mark vi, 3. So also 
was Joseph a carpenter (Matt, xiii, 55). From 
Matt, xiii, 55, 56, we also infer that Jesus had 
at least four brothers and two sisters. 

Edersheim ("Life and Times," etc., I, 252) 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 79 

says : "Among the Jews the contempt for manual 
labor, which was one of the painful character- 
istics of heathenism, did not exist. On the con- 
trary, it was deemed a religious duty, frequently 
and most earnestly insisted upon, to learn some 
trade." When Jesus returned to Nazareth at 
the age of twelve he learned a trade, possibly 
in the shop which Joseph owned. When Joseph 
died, which was probably before many years — 
since we have no later mention of him in the 
gospel narratives — Jesus became the support of 
the family. I doubt not that this fact of Jesus 
having been a workingman, the chief support of 
a large family, has done much to make him be- 
loved by the common people during the centuries. 
In a normal, healthy life the man is the sure 
fulfillment of what the child has been. And by 
this principle of judgment we can tell something 
of what Jesus was and what he did during those 
"eighteen silent years" in Nazareth. The law 
of Jesus' life in manhood was the law of serv- 
ice. Read again Matt, xx, 25-28. I think we 
see here in the full flower what the members of 
that Nazareth home-circle saw in the bud during 
those years of toil and service when Jesus was 
working at his trade and supporting by his 
labors his widowed mother and younger brothers 
and sisters. Then, again, in his manhood Jesus 
lived a life of prayer (Luke iii, 21 ; Mark i, 35; 
Luke v, 16; vi, 12). He won all his victories 



80 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

by prayer. Do not we find in all this the sure 
and natural fulfillment of what Jesus was dur- 
ing those eighteen long years in Nazareth? 

I find, therefore, that the message of those 
years, when 'tis said, "Jesus advanced in wisdom 
and stature, and in favor with God and men," 
brings to the young life of our time these three 
lessons : First, that menial labor is in itself 
honorable, respectable, and dignified. Jesus of 
Nazareth was a workingman. Second, that the 
way to true greatness is by helpful service. 
Jesus wa,s truly great; he served others. This 
he did as a young man, giving ready and will- 
ing service for the support of his own kindred, 
and no doubt by unnumbered gracious ministra- 
tions to the needy ones about him. Third, as a 
young man Jesus must have often been in 
prayer and meditation, else his mature life of 
prayer is something more than fulfillment of his 
early years. 

Finally, never think less of one because he 
works; Jesus' own example has stamped all 
honest work as clean and honorable. Never de- 
spise true service. Jesus taught by precept and 
example that only one who truly serves is truly 
great. And let no one forget the importance, 
for one's own life, of prayer and religious 
thoughtfulness. "More things are wrought by 
prayer than this world dreams of." 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 81 

THE WILDERNESS TEMPTATIONS; A KEY TO THE 

INTERPRETATION OF THE LIFE OF JESUS. 

Temptation comes to all. To be tempted is 
not sin. To yield to temptation is sin. The 
gospel writers say that Jesus was tempted, yet 
without sin. There are those who find it diffi- 
cult to think of Jesus as being tempted. Would 
the fact that Jesus was a holy being have any 
bearing upon the question of his being tempted? 
No and yes. No, — since the possibility of be- 
ing tempted depends not upon the fact of one's 
being holy or unholy, but rather upon the fact 
of an individual's having appetites and desires, 
and avenues of pleasure and of pain ; yes, — since 
the holier one is, the more one can appreciate 
the desirability of the good thing which, it is 
suggested and promised by the tempter, may be, 
by the unholy means suggested, secured, and 
further, yes, — since, as Wescott well observes, 
"sympathy with the sinner in his trial does not 
depend on the experience of sin, but on the ex- 
perience of the strength of the temptation to 
sin, which only the sinless can know in its full 
intensity. He who falls, yields before the last 
strain." Therefore, it is written: "For we have 
not a high priest that cannot be touched with 
the feeling of our infirmities; but one that hath 
been in all points tempted like as we are, yet 
without sin." 

The New Testament narratives of the Wilder- 



82 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

ness Temptations of Jesus are found in Matt, 
iv, 1-11; Mark i, 12, 13; and Luke iv, 1-13. 

A number of questions are raised by a study 
of these narratives which are interesting but 
not of the greatest importance to us. In our 
study of Jesus under temptation, it would be a 
mistake to give these minor questions undue rela- 
tive consideration. For instance: Did Satan 
appear to Jesus in bodily form? Could you 
and I have seen Satan if we had been with Jesus 
during those forty days of religious fasting? 
Did Jesus wholly abstain from food during 
those forty days? From whom did the Gospel 
writers get their information about the tempta- 
tions of Jesus in the wilderness? Did Satan 
take Jesus in his physical body to Jerusalem and 
set him on the pinnacle of the Temple, or to a 
high mountain? These questions are all inter- 
esting and I can well conceive how their con- 
sideration might, under some circumstances, be 
really profitable. 

But the immediately important questions for 
us I conceive to be (1) What are the New 
Testament narratives of the temptations? That 
is, just what were the temptations which Jesus 
endured in the wilderness during the period im- 
mediately following his baptism by John? (2) 
Were they real temptations? (3) What, if 
any, meaning have they for us? 

(1) First, what were the temptations of 
Jesus ? Just what took place ? The New Testa- 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 83 

ment record consists of the narratives of what 
took place in the inner consciousness of Jesus 
during the period immediately following his 
baptism by John. The form of the narratives, 
especially of Matthew and Luke, is manifestly 
symbolical or figurative. But no words could 
have more literally set forth what is believed 
to have taken place in the inner consciousness of 
Jesus during those days of testing and fast- 
ing. 

The question has been cited as an interesting 
one: From whom did the Gospel writers get 
their information concerning the temptations of 
Jesus? No doubt, Jesus told the story of those 
days to his disciples many times before his death 
upon the Cross on Calvary. The New Testa- 
ment narratives apparently sum up in the three 
temptations, as recorded, the general substance 
and forms of temptation which came upon Jesus 
during the forty days in the wilderness. And it 
will be seen by a study of those temptations that 
they comprehend essentially every kind of 
temptation which can ever come to a human 
soul. Following Matthew's order, they were as 
follows : 

(1) An appeal to satisfy personal, physical 
need in a manner contrary to God's will. First, 
be it noted that Jesus had just been assured, by a 
wonderful spiritual experience in connection 
with and following his baptism, of the Father's 
approval of him as the Son, and Jesus was now 



84 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

clearly conscious of the possession of extra- 
ordinary powers. The question of that hour 
with him would be as to how he should use these 
powers of the possession of which he had now 
become conscious. Through days of meditation, 
prayer and reflection, tempting and trial, Jesus 
was to reach the answer to that question. What 
that answer should be would determine the 
policy and method of all his life work in the 
fulfillment of his mission. If a study of the 
Wilderness temptations shall furnish us with an 
answer to the question indicated, we shall be 
furnished at the same time with a key to the 
interpretation of the life of Jesus. 

Secondly, in getting at the character of the 
first temptation mentioned by Matthew, we see 
that Jesus was not here tempted to do anything 
in itself wrong. The method of attack upon 
him was by suggesting that he was possibly mis- 
taken in his interpretation of his own religious 
experience. "If thou art the Son of God, com- 
mand that these stones become bread." Here 
also came the suggestion to make a wrong use 
of those unique powers, of which Jesus was now 
the conscious possessor. But Jesus would not 
be a mere wonder-worker. He here, as ever, put 
first things first. Seek ye first not bread, but 
seek ye first the kingdom of God, and, therefore, 
without argument about his own divine Sonship, 
Jesus answered by using the words of Deuter- 
onomy viii, 3 : "Man shall not live by bread alone, 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 85 

but by every word that proceedeth out of the 
mouth of God." 

(2) The second temptation took the form of 
an appeal to go about his great work of win- 
ning the multitude by means of sensationalism. 
But Jesus would not even win the attention of 
the multitude, important to the prosecution of 
his work as that was, by the use of any other 
methods than those which might be used by any 
human being. He would win all his victories 
under human conditions and in spite of human 
limitations. So only could his work and life be 
that of a faithful High Priest and helper for us. 
In his refusal to adopt the methods of sensa- 
tionalism may be found a lesson for us when 
we are tempted to make trial of God for sensa- 
tional purposes to-day. 

(3) The third temptation (Matthew iv, 8f.) 
was one to dip the colors in order to win the 
world. This temptation was perhaps the most 
perilous of all. Jesus sought to benefit all the 
world. To this end the world must be reached 
and won. Therefore, came the Satanic sugges- 
tion, "the end justifies the means." This was the 
third and last temptation, and by this, Jesus rec- 
ognized the face of Satan, who is "a liar, and the 
father thereof" (John viii, 44). "Then saith 
Jesus unto him, Get thee hence Satan: for it is 
written, thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, 
and him only shalt thou serve." So was Jesus 
tempted like as we are tempted, yet without sin. 



86 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

Were the temptations of Jesus real tempta- 
tions? We do not doubt it. To have faked 
such an experience would have been unworthy 
of anyone, and much more of Jesus. Could 
Jesus have yielded to the temptations? If he 
could not then he was not tempted. Did he 
triumph as Son of Man, or as Son of God? If 
he was not tempted as we are tempted, and if 
he did not triumph as we may triumph, then is 
the record no help to us, no challenge to us nor 
encouragement for us. He was tempted as every 
man is tempted, and he won the victory as every 
man may win. The stories of the temptations of 
Jesus have pregnant meaning for us. They 
challenge us to trust God's way; to obey God 
and not to presume upon Him; to worship God 
and serve Him only. They greatly encourage 
us, since the victories which he won were won 
under the same limitations and conditions which 
obtain with us, and therefore, as he has won so 
also by like means may we. 

THE MIRACLES OF JESUS. 

There was a time when people believed in the 
divinity of Jesus because of the miracles which 
he worked. They believed in Christ because of 
what they knew of the miracles. 

To-day we would probably more truly say 
that men believe in miracles because of what they 
know of Christ. 

As one who believes that Jesus worked the 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 87 

miracles recorded in The Gospels I am convinced, 
with Professor Sanday, that in so doing he made 
this sympathetic adaptation of the methods of 
his teaching to the ideas and expectations of the 
people of his own time. 

We have already seen how — Jesus being con- 
scious of the possession of extraordinary powers 
— the temptation in the wilderness grew out of 
the question how those powers should be used. 

A study of Jesus' experience under tempta- 
tion affords a key to many hard problems in 
the interpretation of the life and work of Jesus. 
Professor Sanday observes (Article, "Jesus 
Christ," Hastings' Bib. Diet., Vol. II, 626): 
"The public ministry of Jesus wears the aspect 
it does, not because of limitations imposed 
from without, but of limitations imposed from 
within." 

The people sought for signs and wonders and 
miracles. And they thought of these as the 
normal and natural way for God to make special 
manifestation of Himself and His power. Jesus 
wished the people to see God in all holy ministra- 
tions and to know Him in all his works. And 
therefore, he never gave free course to his powers 
to work miracles according to the current ideas 
and expectations of the people. 

He did, with certain carefully self-imposed 
limitations, consent to do some miracles, but ever 
with strict reference to the purpose of his mis- 
sion, and always in perfect accord with the prin- 



88 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

ciples which he adopted during the temptation 
in the wilderness for the guidance of his life. 

Sanday further observes : "He steadily refused 
to work miracles for any purely self-regarding 
end. If the fact that he works miracles at all 
is a sympathetic adaptation to the beliefs and 
expectations of the time, those beliefs are 
schooled and criticized while they are adopted 
(Matt, xii, 39; xvi, If. and John iv, 48), the ele- 
ment of mere display, the element of self-asser- 
tion, even of self-preservation, is eliminated from 
them. They are studiously restricted to the pur- 
poses of the mission." 

And Professor Sanday has further pointed 
out that the miracles of Jesus are restricted in 
three ways. They are restricted (1) in their 
subject-matter, (2) in the conditions under 
which they are wrought and (3) in the manner 
of their publication. And this shows how and 
in what sense the miracles could be described by 
Jesus as "The works which none other did." 
They were wholly unique as thus restricted. 

But it was by these miracles which he did, as 
thus restricted, that Jesus at once corrected the 
current idea of miracles as mere crude signs and 
wonders, and also by these miracles did Jesus 
correct the current idea and expectation of a 
Messiah who was to gather around himself great 
crowds and establish an outward and temporal 
kingdom. 

By these miracles Jesus not only corrected 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 89 

the current expectations of Messianic signs and 
wonders, and the current expectations of the 
Messiah and the Messiah's kingdom, but further 
did he arrest and grip and hold the attention of 
a wonder-seeking age, upon himself and God 
the Father until they who heard his words and 
saw his works were judged thereby, according as 
they saw and loved, or saw and hated both Jesus 
and the Father. So could Jesus say — "If I had 
not done among them the works which none other 
did, they had not had sin: but now have they 
both seen and hated both me and my Father." 

We have thus seen (1) How the experience 
of Jesus in the wilderness affords us a key to 
the paradoxical character of Christ's wonderful 
works known as miracles. We have seen also 
(2) What instruments for teaching these 
miracles in Christ's hands became. And we 
might go on to see (3) That, without some such 
wonderful works by which they of a wonder-ex- 
pecting age might recognize the grace and per- 
sonality of God come to men, there would be no 
way by which we could explain the faith and 
life and vitality of the early church. 

Thus far I have spoken of the miracles of 
Jesus as taking for granted (1) The objective 
possibility of miracles and (£) The inherent 
credibility of miracles. 

It might be well to consider in a few words 
the possibility and the credibility of miracles. 
Many have denied the possibility of miracles. 



90 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

Now it may be argued that in any systematic 
and thorough-going materialism there is no 
place for miracles. But it may also be said that 
to systematic and thorough-going materialism 
all action of mental and spiritual forces is im- 
possible. 

If anyone believes that the operations of 
spiritual forces are as real and familiar as are 
material forces, then may that one find easy il- 
lustration of the way in which the spiritual order 
may intrude itself into the physical order. For 
example, we may point to the action of the human 
will, of which the phenomenal effect may be 
the motion of one's own body, or as when one 
wills to lift a book and does lift it, even though 
according to the law of gravitation the book 
would not rise but fall. 

When we let spiritual agents into our concep- 
tion of the all-including universe (and their be- 
ing is certainly involved in the action of our 
own will and the processes of our own thinking) 
then is the way open for us to conceive God as 
the freest and highest of these. 

As J. H. Bernhard declares ("Miracle," 
"Hastings' Diet." Ill, 380), "Our conception of 
the universe is partial and inadequate unless we 
realize that a great Spiritual Being is the ulti- 
mate source of all the manifold activities which it 
daily and hourly presents to our view. And if, 
with this in our minds, we approach an anoma- 
lous phenomenon which seems to us to interrupt 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 91 

the continuity of physical sequence, we shall have 
to enumerate among possible explanations this 
other, that it is due to the direct volition of 
the Deity. If we are satisfied that this is its 
explanation, we call it a miracle." 

With this all-including view of the universe, 
physical and spiritual, miracles are not only ob- 
jectively possible, but, upon proper evidence, in- 
herently credible also. 

And miracles as thus conceived could never 
become a disturbance in the law and order of 
the all-including universe. 

The one totally incongruous marvel of marvels, 
as introducing disturbance in the law and order 
of the universe, is sin. 

THE LOGIC OF THE RESURRECTION. 

The Christian world never had greater reason 
than now to believe that Jesus, who was called 
Christ, "suffered under Pontius Pilate, was 
crucified, dead and buried ; the third day he rose 
from the dead." 

Reason justifies such a faith. If Jesus was 
in other respects what he claimed to be, or what 
his contemporaries believed him to be, then we 
would naturally expect him to have overcome the 
world and conquer death. The rational world, 
Christian and non-Christian and heathen, freely 
concedes Jesus to have been the noblest man of 
all ages. It is not comprehended how reason, 
which concedes so much to Jesus, can at the same 



92 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

time sweep aside his most unique claims and pre- 
tensions for himself. No man, even in his own 
thought, convicteth Jesus of sin, and yet he is 
recorded by the gospel writers to have foretold 
his own death and resurrection — Matt, xx, 
17-19; Mark x, 32-34; Luke xviii, 31-34; 
John, "Farewell Discourses." 

Distinguished doubters like Lord Bolinbroke, 
Professor Huxley and John Stuart Mill, all 
freely concede the transcendent beauty and 
worth of the Christian Scriptures. But no more 
vital doctrine is set forth in these Scriptures than 
that of the resurrection. 

Reason, which freely concedes so much con- 
cerning Jesus and these records of his life among 
men, certainly justifies our faith in this great 
supporting doctrine of the whole, the doctrine of 
the resurrection. 

Lyman Abbott has insisted that our belief in 
no alleged event of ancient history has been so 
buttressed by historic evidence as has the resur- 
rection of Jesus. 

Our belief in the resurrection of Jesus is forti- 
fied: by the separate records of independent 
historians ; by the recorded testimony of eye wit- 
nesses, embracing large numbers, under the most 
varied circumstances ; by the acknowledged fact 
that a company of despairing disciples, within 
a few days, became a band of invincible, con- 
quering heroes; by the fact of every early 
Christian institution; by every early Christian 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 93 

writing, those by Paul, Peter, John, James, Luke, 
Origen, Justin Martyr, and scores of others; by 
the moral and religious revolution that followed 
the preaching everywhere of the alleged resur- 
rection. It is too much even for credulity to 
believe what those who doubt the resurrection 
would have us believe. We can not believe that 
the greatest good which ever came to this old 
earth, came through the preaching of a lie. 
The logic of the resurrection is well expressed 
by the belief of the Christian world that Jesus 
"suffered under Pontius Pilate; was crucified, 
dead and buried; the third day he rose from the 
dead." Historic evidence and the very soul of 
reason shut us up to such a conclusion. 

In the light of modern science, psychology, 
and philosophy we can begin to see that the 
resurrection of Jesus was inevitable. If it were 
not so, then would crass materialism have the 
final word in the explanation of the universe and 
the Creator would finally be overcome by the 
creature matter. If Jesus was what you and 
I and the human mind universal believe him to 
have been, then he must not have been held by 
death. "The last enemy that shall be abolished 
is death." But death can be an enemy only as 
it can cut short the progress of life. The in- 
spired instincts of the race have grasped this 
truth. Witness the unsystematized hopes of all 
peoples. Witness also the Scriptures of Israel. 
Witness also the systematized hopes and faith 



94 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

of the modern mind. The wonder of wonders 
past all human comprehension would have been 
for Jesus not to have been raised from the hold 
and power of death. Being what he was he must 
have risen from the dead. The logic of the 
resurrection is well expressed by the Apostle as 
follows: "Now hath Christ been raised from the 
dead, the first fruits of them that are asleep." 
In the letter to the Corinthians, from which 
the above words are taken, is the oldest writ- 
ten record of the resurrection that has come 
down to us. It has probably occurred to many 
of you that the authors of the New Testament 
nowhere furnish us any labored argument to 
prove the resurrection, but they refer to it al- 
ways as a fact fully believed in the church, and 
therefore, they give us such evidence as they do 
only incidentally and as narrative. In 1 Corin- 
thians xv, the Apostle more nearly approaches 
an argument to prove the resurrection than do 
any of the other New Testament writers, yet 
even there his argument has to do with that 
which is confessedly the clearest ground of the 
Christian hope. Paul himself accepted the fact 
of the resurrection upon the testimony of his 
own consciousness of having seen the risen Lord, 
as also upon the testimony of Peter and possibly 
other of the apostles with whom he had early be- 
come acquainted at Jerusalem. And so Paul 
wrote to the Corinthians "For I delivered unto 
you first of all that which also I received, how 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 95 

that Christ died for our sins according to the 
Scriptures; and that he hath been raised on the 
third day according to the scriptures; and that 
he appeared to Cephas ; then to the twelve ; then 
he appeared to above five hundred brethren at 
once, of whom the greater part remain until now, 
but some are fallen asleep ; then he appeared to 
James ; then to all the apostles ; and last of all, 
as unto one born out of due time, he appeared to 
me also" (1 Cor. xv, 3-8). Paul makes his 
argument not to prove the resurrection of Christ 
but rather to emphasize the importance of the 
doctrine as the very basis of the Christian faith, 
and to show its relation to the hope of im- 
mortality. Upon the undoubted fact of Christ's 
resurrection Paul reared the structure of his 
argument for the hope of the general resurrec- 
tion. There was among the Corinthians a 
danger of unbelief in the general resurrection 
of the dead. Paul met such skepticism by the 
logic set forth in his letter. 

The manner of the resurrection of Christ is 
not revealed to us. The resurrection is stated 
as a fact, and it is presented as the surest 
ground of hope that we too shall live again. 
The preaching of the Apostles was full of the 
resurrection. Their Gospel has been spoken of 
as the Gospel of the resurrection. Their own 
faith had revived only when they were convinced 
beyond any doubting that Jesus had actually 
risen. Everybody in Jerusalem knew of the 



96 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

crucifixion. It had seemed to all the disciples 
and friends of Jesus as if their highest hopes 
had been thwarted by the cross. Of course the 
enemies of Jesus, as well as the indifferent ones, 
were sure that now the end had come. One more 
fanatic had paid the penalty of his folly on that 
hill outside the city walls. Such was the situa- 
tion when upon that historic day Jesus hanged 
upon the cross. 

The Christian world has believed concerning 
Jesus that "the third day he rose from the 
dead." May we at the beginning of the twenti- 
eth century find any natural reason why he 
should have thus risen? 

We answer that Christ rose from the dead and 
"ascended into heaven," because it was necessary 
that he, who was for a time incarnate in the 
flesh, should go away, that is, be de-localized 
through death in order that he might come in 
the Holy Spirit to sustain and help men every- 
where without reference to any particular loca- 
tion in the body. But not only so, it was neces- 
sary that the disciples should be convinced be- 
yond any doubt that their Master, Jesus, was 
thus alive after the transition which men call 
death, else they could never again exercise re- 
ceiving faith in him. Therefore, did Jesus 
vouchsafe such marvelous appearings and disap- 
pearings to his disciples and others during the 
days after the resurrection. When they were 
made sure beyond all doubting that Jesus was 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 97 

alive after having died upon the cross, then in- 
deed there was nothing needed for him to do but 
to give to them the Great Commission to go and 
teach others the same Good News of life and im- 
mortality which they had learned, and then "he 
ascended into heaven, and sitteth at the right 
hand of God the Father Almighty." 

We have not chosen in this place to marshal 
the historical evidence of the resurrection, though 
we are firmly convinced that such evidence, direct 
and indirect, is most conclusive. If any of us 
have any doubt as to the reality of the resurrec- 
tion of Christ we may well ask ourselves to con- 
sider what would have been the outcome if 
Jesus had not been raised from the dead? Upon 
this question I will give to you the words of 
Doctor Gross Alexander who says ("Son of 
Man," 363ff.): "The followers of Jesus were 
few in number, they were without prestige, with- 
out influence, without learning; in short, they 
were peasants and women. The world was not 
friendly to them. Jews and pagans had com- 
bined to destroy their leader, and had succeeded. 
The forlorn followers of that leader the world 
did not even pity. It despised them. They, on 
their part, with the loss of their leader had lost 
hope and courage, and they cowered before the 
world and slunk away from its scorn and its 
hate. 

"If Jesus had remained among the dead, his 
followers would have bidden an eternal farewell 



98 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

to their Leader and Lord and to all their hopes. 
They would have accepted the verdict of fate 
and of their enemies, that his death was the end- 
all. They would have had no Gospel to preach. 
The Acts of the Apostles would never have been 
enacted, and The Gospels would never have been 
written. Paul would never have been converted, 
his Gospel would never have been preached, his 
epistles would never have been penned. Chris- 
tianity could never have been established; the 
renovation of humanity would never have taken 
place ; and the kingdom of God would never have 
been known. The world would still be rotting 
with the corpse of Jesus." 

The great German critic, Keim, expresses es- 
sentially the same idea in the following words: 
"All evidences go to prove that the belief in the 
Messiah would have died out without the liv- 
ing Jesus ; and by the return of the apostles to 
the synagogue and to Judaism, the gold of the 
words of Jesus would have been buried in the 
dust of oblivion. The greatest of men would 
have passed away and left no trace. For a 
time Galilee would have preserved some truth 
and some fiction about him; but his cause would 
have produced no religious exaltation and no 
Paul. 

"The evidence that Jesus was alive was neces- 
sary, after an earthly downfall which was so un- 
exampled. The evidence that he was alive was 
given, by his own impulsion and by the will of 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 99 

God. The Christianity of to-day owes to this 
evidence, first its Lord, and next its own exist- 
ence. Thus, though much has fallen away, the 
secure faith-fortress of the resurrection of Jesus 
remains." By the resurrection then was given 
the crowning and divine sanction to all of Jesus' 
life in the flesh; his unique claims for himself 
were here shown to be both reasonable and sure. 

Again, Jesus rose from the dead in order to 
lead captivity captive, to free humanity from 
the fear of death. To us who believe that Jesus 
rose from the dead (and we cannot disbelieve it) 
the resurrection is the sure proof of immortality. 
Since the resurrection of Jesus we know that 
death does not end all. As Keim has said: 
"The hope of immortality which ran through 
mankind as a contradicted sign, has become a 
bright light and clear truth through him alone; 
spiritually, through his word, and visibly 
through his act. He has dissipated anxious 
dread by showing the firm ground of a heavenly 
future for the children of God." 

Finally, what to-day for us is the logic of the 
resurrection? This cannot be better answered 
than by considering what would be the situation 
with us to-day if someone could take away our 
belief that Jesus did rise from the dead. If you 
would take away our faith in the resurrection, 
you would take our New Testament; the Christ 
of whom we learn in the New Testament ; the 
church founded upon confessed faith in the 



100 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

Christ ; the Christian Sunday upon which we had 
believed that He had risen ; and all Christian in- 
stitutions which rest upon faith in a risen Christ. 
Take away this day our faith in the resurrec- 
tion and you impeach human nature at its best; 
you involve the origin of the world's best civili- 
zation in the grossest mystery, and you make an 
unanswerable riddle of all the Christian centuries. 
Even as Paul reasons "and if Christ hath not 
been raised, your faith is vain ; ye are yet in your 
sins. Then they also which have fallen asleep in 
Christ have perished. If in this life only we 
have hoped in Christ, we are of all men most piti- 
able." Psychology, and philosophy, history, 
faith and cogent reasoning, combine to constitute 
the logic of the resurrection still invincible. 

ON THE COMING OF JESUS. 

The last Tuesday before the crucifixion was 
a strangely eventful day in the public ministry 
of Jesus. It was clearly discerned by Jesus, 
and at least dimly understood by the disciples, 
that hours of real crisis were fast approaching. 
When, late in the day, Jesus was going out from 
the temple some of the disciples called his atten- 
tion to the great stones of the buildings, and 
their imposing grandeur. Jesus replied with a 
prophecy of the temple's overthrow. The dis- 
ciples dimly understood that in some deep sense 
Jesus would be present in the fulfillment of this 
prophecy. When Jesus, a little later in the 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 101 

evening, sat on the Mount of Olives with his 
disciples, they questioned him: "Tell us, when 
shall these things be? and what shall be the sign 
of thy coming (Greek, "presence"), and of the 
end of the world?" And Jesus began his answer 
to them by saying : "Take heed that no man lead 
you astray." And in the twenty-fourth chapter 
of Matthew we have vague and somewhat dis- 
connected notes upon the conversation which 
followed. 

It may be noted that the expression "second 
coming," as used in contrast to the first coming 
of Jesus, is not found in the Bible. It would 
be helpful to clear thinking if the expression 
"second coming" could be dropped, at least 
when any attempt is being made to interpret 
Biblical teachings upon this subject. The in- 
terpretation of Biblical teaching concerning the 
"coming" or comings of Jesus is difficult at best. 
The twenty-fourth chapter of Matthew is in part 
as obscure as anything in the book of Revela- 
tion. 

The comings and goings, appear ings and dis- 
appearings, the presence and revelation of Jesus 
were all with essentially one purpose or aim. 
And the manner, the method, was that in every 
case which would best emphasize the reality of 
the unseen. The same is true to-day. The pur- 
pose to be accomplished was, and is, primarily to 
make men everywhere aware of God, and of the 
real world of the unseen. 



102 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

Incidentally Jesus comes — that is, appears, or 
makes himself manifest — in judgment, in great 
crises, in the clouds of heaven, in a truer appre- 
ciation of the glory of the sun, moon and stars. 
Wars have heralded his coming. Earthquakes 
have won attention, and famines have made men 
to love his appearing. The "abomination of 
desolation" standing where he ought not, has been 
the sign and prophecy of Jesus' sure presence 
in judgment, destruction, restoration, power, and 
final glory. "Let him that readeth understand." 
Jesus came. Jesus is coming. Jesus shall come. 
Blessed are the eyes of some who will read these 
words, for you have loved his appearing, and 
your eyes have seen the glory of the coming of 
the Lord! 

Jesus often spoke upon this subject. He 
taught of his coming in historical crises, in the 
presence and person of the Holy Spirit, in 
spiritual fellowship, in the hour of death, and in 
judgment at the end of the world, and to receive 
his own into everlasting glory in the kingdom of 
God. 

It is not strange that the early struggling, 
persecuted Christians should have eagerly looked 
for the immediate return in bodily form of Jesus, 
to avenge them of their foes, and to visibly reign 
upon the earth. But the most real coming of 
Jesus is not now, nor has it ever been, a bodily 
coming. The fact of real and abiding import- 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 103 

ance has always been the spiritual fact, the com- 
ing of the invisible God into the conscious life 
of men. Of this coming no man, nor even the 
Son of Man, can foretell the times or the seasons, 
for this real coming of Jesus is always condi- 
tioned upon the attitude of human souls. Jesus 
always comes "in the fullness of time." And he 
always comes as a "savor of life unto life" to 
those individuals who are ready, but "of death 
unto death" for those who have not believed he 
would come at all, and who, therefore, are not 
ready. 

One immediate purpose of Jesus' teaching was 
always to get men's hopes and expectations away 
from the idea of a merely physical coming to 
something which is more real, and which can be 
more universal. He would have men every- 
where look for the coming into their lives of a 
presence which can "abide" with them when sun, 
moon and stars have rolled into the ruins of a 
forgotten past. This presence of the Lord 
Jesus can, and will, come only to those who 
"watch" and wait. "Heaven and Earth shall 
pass away, but my words shall not pass away. 
But of that day and hour knoweth no one, not 
even the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but 
the Father only. . . . Therefore, be ye 
also ready; for in an hour that ye think not, 
the Son of Man cometh." 



104 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

THOUGHTS ON THE ASCENSION. 

Matthew and John have left no narrative of 
the ascension of the Lord Jesus. Mark refers 
to it, but only in the appendix (xvi, 19) to his 
Gospel. Luke closes his Gospel history with the 
story of the ascension. Wescott and Hort say: 
"The ascension apparently did not lie within the 
proper scope of The Gospels, as seen in their 
genuine texts; its true place was at the head of 
The Acts of the Apostles, as the preparation for 
the day of Pentecost, and thus the beginning of 
the history of the church." The author of The 
Acts says of the last meeting of the disciples and 
Jesus: "As they were looking, he was taken 
up ; and a cloud received him out of their sight." 
Basing its belief upon these Scripture records, 
the Christian world has confidently affirmed con- 
cerning Jesus Christ that "He ascended into 
heaven." 

It is because I believe that too much insistence 
can not be placed upon the importance of be- 
coming familiar with the real meaning of the 
ascension that I offer the following suggestions 
concerning the doctrine that "He ascended into 
heaven." 

And, first of all, it should be noted that the 
really important questions pertaining to the 
ascension of Jesus do not have anything to do 
with the manner or form of that event. The 
manner or form of Jesus' going away was as 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 105 

mysterious, undoubtedly, as was the manner or 
form of his coming. But neither did his coming 
nor going involve any more of real and unex- 
plained mystery than do the coming and going 
of every human life. When Jesus "ascended 
into heaven," what was it that really took place? 
This much seems assured: If that which took 
place in the ascension had not taken place, then 
the events of Pentecost could not have occurred. 

In our effort to understand the story, we must 
not dwell too much on the form of words or 
imagery, but rather must we seek the ideas which 
are half-veiled and half-revealed by the words of 
time and space in which the ideas are set forth. 

"And the Word became flesh, and dwelt among 
us ;" that is, the all-comprehending expression, 
or Word, became localized, for the sake of a 
tremendous emphasis, in one man, Christ Jesus, 
that in him God might be so declared unto men 
that as men should receive him they would 
thereby "receive power" to be true and loyal 
children of God. And all this was certainly 
"expedient" for all men. But when Jesus had, 
with concentrated local emphasis, declared the 
true and universal love and fatherhood of God, 
and the consequent brotherhood of man, and had 
demonstrated, in his own person, how the king- 
dom of God can, and may come, through the 
doing of God's will, under human conditions, 
then did he declare to his disciples: "It is ex- 
pedient for you that I go away : for if I go not 



106 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

away, the Comforter will not come unto you." 
Then did it come to pass that this which had 
been actually realized in an individual and local 
way, by the incarnation, should be possible of 
realization in a world-wide way, and for all time, 
by the ascension. And this de-localization again 
of the Eternal Word of God by the ascension 
was as expedient for mankind, considering man's 
ever manifest and evolving needs, as was the 
localization of the Eternal Word by the incarna- 
tion. So, and so only, could be realized the uni- 
versal coming of the "Spirit of Truth," because 
so only could the human mind be so freed from 
the contracting bondage of a merely local and 
fleshly worship, that it might be able to receive 
and be led by the Spirit of Truth when he should 
come. Thus alone could the glory of the Eter- 
nal Word, in whom is "the life" which "is the 
light of men," be progressively realized, until in 
all the life and activities of men, it should be 
beheld in holy rapture, "as of the only begotten 
of the Father, full of grace and truth." Such, 
then, for all mankind, was the expediency of 
Jesus' ascension. 

And so it came to pass that "he ascended into 
heaven, and sitteth at the right hand of God the 
Father Almighty." But where is "the right 
hand of God"? It is in that timeless and space- 
less and measureless world of the unseen whence 
Jesus came at the time of his incarnation. 

But much of our confusion, when we have 



A GROUP OF STUDIES 107 

thought of the ascension, has come from the 
chief place in our thought having been given 
to "clouds," and time and space relations. The 
late Bishop Wescott says : "This danger besets 
us in its gravest shape when we endeavor to give 
distinctness to the unseen world. We transfer, 
and we must transfer, the language of earth, the 
imagery of succession in time and space, to an 
order of beings to which, as far as we know, it is 
wholly inapplicable. We can not properly em- 
ploy such terms as 'before' and 'after,' 'here' 
and 'there,' of God or of spirit. . . . While, 
then, we are constrained to use words of time 
and space, and to speak of going up and coming 
down, of present and future, in regard to the 
spirit-world and Christ's glorified life, we must 
remember that such language belongs to our 
imperfect conceptions as we now are, and not to 
realities themselves. If once we can feel that the 
imagery in which the glories of the world to 
come are described is only imagery, we can dwell 
upon it with ever-increasing intelligence and 
without distraction." 

Let us then not think of the ascension of Jesus 
with so much emphasis upon the change of posi- 
tion, or the direction, or the manner of his going, 
as upon the change of the mode of his presence. 
Jesus ceased to be present with his disciples un- 
der one mode of appearing, which was limited by 
the conditions of time and space, in order that 
he might be manifestly present with them, and 



108 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

with all others, under another mode of appearing 
which would not be limited by any conditions of 
time and space. 

If the kingdom of God in Christ was to be 
builded upon earth, it was necessary that the 
disciples should be fully convinced that the real 
and living Christ was not limited to the con- 
ditions of time and space, since only thus can 
he be present with different persons, at different 
places, at the same time. 

It was to teach these all-important lessons 
that the disciples were permitted to see those 
remarkable appearings, and no less remarkable 
disappearings, during those forty days following 
the resurrection. "These lessons," says Bishop 
Wescott, "were not finished by the resurrection. 
The appearances of Jesus during the great forty 
days, however mysterious, still set him in connec- 
tion with particular places and times. It was 
therefore 'expedient' that he should 'go away' 
in order that his disciples might feel him near 
them always and everywhere." And that is what 
we acknowledge to have taken place when we 
say, "he ascended into heaven." 



VIII 

OF THE INCREASE OF CHRIST'S 
KINGDOM 

A CHRISTMAS MEDITATION. 

For the solving of most human problems, it 
is not more sight that is needed, but more in- 
sight. Not by statistics and tables are most 
important questions answered. The kingdom 
cometh not with observation. The true signs of 
the times are for those only who have insight. 
It is so with the problem of the progress of 
Christ's kingdom in the earth. It was not by 
sight, but by insight, that the ancient prophet 
was able to say: "And the government shall be 
upon his shoulder: . . . and of peace there 
shall be no end" (Isaiah ix, 6, 7). 

Mere signs and symbols, tables and observa- 
tion, are not to be despised. These have their 
use. But the greatest signs can only be dis- 
cerned by those who have somehow come into 
vital touch with God, and who are thus responsive 
to the things of God. To those who can rightly 
discern and interpret the signs of the times to- 
day it will appear that Isaiah's prophecy is now 
coming into fulfillment with unparalleled rapid- 

fty. 

But as a most important preliminary to any 
serious meditation upon the progress of Christ's 
109 



110 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

kingdom, careful note should be taken of the 
significant conviction that "the government shall 
be upon his shoulder," which the course of recent 
philosophical thought has forced upon the mind 
of this generation. 

The course of our meditation may run some- 
what as follows: All that the human mind can 
rationally conceive may be included in the three 
ideas — humanity, the world, and God. Without 
God no rationally assignable origin or cause of 
humanity or the world is possible. Without 
God no rational relation between humanity and 
the world can be affirmed or imagined. But with 
God, free, intelligent, purposive, in the continu- 
ous outgoing of whose will and purpose both 
humanity and the world have all their being, we 
may have some rational understanding of the 
origin of both, and of the relation which, for 
reason and knowledge exists between them. 

If knowledge for us is to be possible at all, 
and if our thinking may ever be regarded as 
leading to true conclusions, it can only be be- 
cause at the center of things is free intelligence, 
purpose and will, as the expression of whose will 
humanity and the world exist. 

If we reason thus correctly, then God works 
for ends. And we can not think of God as 
setting before Himself as ultimate end, in crea- 
tion, anything less than a perfected humanity 
and a perfected world. The more we learn of 
the world the surer do we become that no will 



INCREASE OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM 111 

contrary to God's will has had any determinative 
part in its making. But in the perfecting of 
humanity God's will has been hindered at many 
turns by man's own will. The universal possi- 
bility of such interference is involved in the fun- 
damental nature of free humanity. But here 
also, for the individual, and also for the race, 
the wages of sin, that is, of interference with 
God's will, is death, while the gift of God to all 
who do His will is eternal life. Wherefore, since 
God is God, in final humanity, the humanity 
which shall finally survive, the will of God shall 
be fully realized. And since according to the 
highest rational intuitions of the race, Jesus is 
God manifest, it follows as sure inference that 
"the government shall be upon his shoulder." 

The foregoing conclusion of modern philosoph- 
ical speculation may be followed by a survey of 
our modern sky for any signs of the fulfillment 
of Isaiah's prophecy. If Jesus was God in- 
carnate, that is, manifest in one man, he was 
also the prophecy of the coming of a divinely 
filled humanity. The progress of Christ's king- 
dom is the progress of God's incarnation among 
men. Jesus came for this end to bring life. 
The true increase of his kingdom has been the 
increase of true life among men. And it is not 
without its lesson that the estimate which society 
places upon human life has greatly advanced in 
a century. George A. Gordon declares, "slowly 
and in spite of all opposing forces life itself 



112 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

has been winning the chief place in thought. 
For the first time in history, in the nineteenth 
century, the people have made their appear- 
ance. ... The chief concern of the nine- 
teenth century is a concern for man" ("New 
Epoch for Faith," 28). 

When the ideals of Christ shall dominate the 
lives of men and rule in human society, then 
shall it be realized that the government of hu- 
manity "shall be upon his shoulder." And un- 
til that day shall fully come, in such degree as 
Christ's ideals are recognized and enthroned in 
human society and government, shall it be true 
that "of the increase of his government and of 
peace there shall be no end." 

Again, the nineteenth century witnessed a 
much higher estimate placed upon the individual 
human life than the ages before had seen. The 
rise of true democracy is modern and Christian. 
The democratic idea is only Christ's idea of the 
value of a single soul, but it has given birth to 
every republic upon earth, and has already 
greatly modified all other governments. 

Further, all other standards of government 
are now tested by Christ. The distinguished 
Chinaman, Minister Wu, while he was the rep- 
resentative of China in the United States, made 
several notable speeches upon Confucianism, 
and he recognized by various comparisons that 
no higher defense of Confucianism was possible 
than to be able to say of it, that it was as good 



INCREASE OF CHRIST'S KINGDOM 113 

as the teaching of Christ. All standards are to- 
day tested by the Christian standard. The 
world recognizes no higher code. 

"O Lord and Master of us all! 
Whate'er our name or sign, 
We own Thy sway, we hear Thy call, 
We test our lives by Thine." 

The increase of Christ's government is seen 
further in the complete putting of human slavery 
under the ban of civilized public opinion 
throughout the world. The Christ idea of hu- 
manity is coming to the throne of humanity. 

All that is good in modern socialism marks 
the increasing influence of the Christ spirit of 
human brotherhood. Significant also is the re- 
markable growth of the missionary spirit among 
the more favored Christian people of our day. 
Sign also of the increase of his kind of govern- 
ment and of peace among men is the continuing 
growth of the peace propaganda among the na- 
tions. And thus the time is surely hastened 
when God shall be incarnate in all, who shall 
remain in His presence, as He is incarnate in 
the Christ, and then the prophecy shall be ful- 
filled in the Christian love of every human being 
for every other, and the government shall fully 
be upon his shoulder. 



IX 

"IN CHRIST" 

Jesus sought for every human being a vital, 
psychological union with himself. This was to 
be psychological rather than physical; mystical 
rather than literal or organic, but in any case 
vital, life-bringing and fruit-resulting. To open 
the way to the realization of such a union with 
himself Jesus revealed the Father to men and 
gave himself in prayer and self-renunciation to 
be a vicarious sacrifice in life and death for his 
fellow men. And Jesus expressed all this in the 
words "in me," or when Jesus and the Father 
were thought of as one then Jesus prayed for 
his disciples, "That they also may be in us." 
The union which Jesus sought was a union of 
aim, purpose, way, a fellowship of ambition, suf- 
fering, life, death and victory with himself. 

This is one of John's great doctrines. John 
writes: "Hereby we know that we are in him: 
He that saith he abideth in him ought himself 
also to walk even as he walked" (1 John ii, 5, 
6). To abide "in Christ," according to John, 
is "to walk even as he walked." John's hope 
of salvation for men was in their being "in 
Christ." Therefore "whosoever abideth in him 
sinneth not." Hereby we know that we are in 
him if we walk even as he also walked. 
114 



"IN CHRIST" 115 

Paul's gospel has sometimes been regarded as 
a gospel of the resurrection. His own supreme 
ambition was that he might know Christ Jesus 
"and the power of his resurrection, and the fel- 
lowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed 
unto his death; if by any means I might attain 
unto the resurrection from the dead" (Phil, iii, 
10, 11). And all this he hoped to realize 
through being in Christ, "for whom," says he, 
"I suffered the loss of all things, and do count 
them but refuse, that I might gain Christ, and 
be found in him," that is, in such complete 
harmony and fellowship with him that when God 
shall look upon him with approval that look 
will include Paul also, and when God shall show 
the power of the eternal life in Christ, that ex- 
hibition will, through Paul's being thus found 
in Christ, extend also to him. Paul believed that 
it would extend also to everyone who through 
Christ-like subordination of self for the good 
of others, and who through a voluntary refusal 
to be responsive to, or alive to, the things of 
self should die unto self in order to be responsive 
to and to live, as Christ did, unto God — to 
everyone who shall be thus found in Christ, that 
is, in such fellowship of purpose and will with 
Christ, to every such one Paul believed God 
would extend the same manifestation of resurrec- 
tion power, the power of the eternal life, as unto 
Christ. "For," wrote Paul to the Colossians, 
"ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. 



116 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, 
then shall ye also with him be manifested in 
glory" (Col. iii, 3, 4). 

"In Christ." The preposition "in" (1) may 
refer to place relations, as in the same locality 
or place; (£) it may refer to temporal relations ; 
(3) it may indicate figurative and personal re- 
lations. It is used in this latter sense in the 
phrase "in Christ," marking the close fellowship 
between the Christian and Christ. 

J. Dick Fleming, in an illuminating article on 
the preposition "in" (Hastings' "Christ and the 
Gospels"), says: "The mystic realism of the 
Pauline and Johannine phrases is rather to be 
found in the fact that they approach the thought 
of a real identification with the Logos or the 
pneumatic Christ. The life divine incorporates 
itself in the Christian ; the Spirit of Christ or of 
God takes the place of the human spirit, and is 
individualized in the life of believers. This idea 
of essential spiritual (mystica, hypostatica) 
union alone does justice to those passages where 
the union of believers with Christ, and even with 
one another, finds sublimest expression." 

Instructive illustration of Paul's use of the 
phrase "in Christ" may be found in his words 
to the Romans, xiv, 14: "I am persuaded in 
the Lord Jesus," that is, in the virtue of that 
fellowship ; when he writes : "Receive him in 
the Lord," that is, in the spirit of such fellow- 
ship (Phil, ii, 29) ; "I say the truth in Christ," 



"IN CHRIST" 117 

that is, I speak the truth "as one united with 
Christ" (Rom. ix, 1). 

The apostle sent a message to one of his 
preachers (Col. iv, 17): "Take heed to the 
ministry which thou hast received in the Lord, 
that thou fulfill it." To the Colossian Chris- 
tians he wrote (Col. ii, 6, 7) : "As therefore ye 
received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, 
rooted and builded up in him." To the Philip- 
pians he wrote: "Salute every saint in Christ 
Jesus" (iv, 21). 



THE PHILOSOPHY OF CHRISTIAN 
PRAYER 

The mystery of prayer is the mystery of all 
spiritual communication. From the human 
point of view this must ever remain a mystery 
defying all final explanation. 

But insight into the identity of the mystery 
of prayer with the mystery of all communica- 
tion of one spiritual person with another, will 
at once remove all inherent difficulty and doubt 
concerning prayer from the mind of everyone 
who believes that human individuals can com- 
municate with each other. To any person who 
is conscious of the possibility of human fellow- 
ship, and who has faith to believe that the 
working of his own mind can be trusted in this 
regard, there need be no inherent doubt or 
difficulty concerning the fundamental problem of 
prayer. 

But as it would be possible for us to imagine 
a person or persons who should live in a com- 
munity and yet never enter into the blessed 
privilege of human fellowship, so it is possible 
for men and women to have their very life in 
the sustaining power of God and yet they never 
enter into the high privilege of fellowship with 
God by prayer. This indeed has been and still 
118 



CHRISTIAN PRAYER 119 

is true of a great portion of humanity. From 
the all-comprehending point of view of Him who 
is our Father in Heaven, His children have been 
and are, in great portion, sour and grumpy, 
and in deepest sense, unsocial because of sin. 

If we will lift up our eyes that we may see and 
view all the race in its profoundest relationships, 
we shall find nothing more significant in the life 
of men than this fact of which I have just been 
speaking. Possibilities of fellowships eternity- 
long and as wide-reaching as the universe of God 
exist for every human soul. But because of sin, 
either one's own or others' sin, the millions are 
dumb and grumpy, sour and full of unbelief; 
God's children are walking upon God's great 
farm without an acquaintance with the Father; 
children in God's great family without the fra- 
ternal spirit. 

Because of a neglect of these divine fellow- 
ships, which might be realized in prayer, men 
go on, therefore, and neglect earthly fellowships 
which would find their chief motive and support 
therein. And so hate and envy and feud and 
prejudice, bloodshed, oppression and war con- 
tinue. 

The purpose of Christ therefore has been to 
reconcile mankind unto the Father. From the 
Christian point of view to establish free fellow- 
ship with God, in the case of any individual, is 
to establish a life of prayer. Christ would have 
all men cease to be strangers and aliens from 



120 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

God, and have them brought into communion 
with God, filled with the filial spirit, whereby 
they may know and communicate with God as 
their Father, and as a direct consequence, learn 
to know and have fellowship with each other as 
members of one great family, one brotherhood 
under the Fatherhood of God. This filial rela- 
tionship between a soul and the Heavenly Father 
is begun and continued by prayer. And there- 
fore the life of the Christian is distinctly a life 
of prayer. 

And therefore, Jesus "spake a parable unto 
them to the end that they ought always to pray, 
and not to faint." Therefore Paul exhorteth 
Timothy "first of all, that supplications, pray- 
ers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all 
men." Therefore Paul also expressed his desire 
"that the men pray in every place, lifting up 
holy hands, without wrath and disputing." 
Therefore James wrote "Pray one for another." 
Therefore when the Lord visited Ananias, a dis- 
ciple of Damascus, and directed him to go to 
the house of one Judas who lived on Straight 
Street, and to inquire for Saul of Tarsus, who 
had been converted while on his way to Damas- 
cus, he summed up the great and radical change 
which had taken place in the life of Saul in these 
comprehensive words — "for behold, he prayeth." 

The place and mission of prayer in the life 
of the Christian may be further seen from a 
study of a lesson which Jesus taught his dis- 



CHRISTIAN PRAYER 121 

ciples on one occasion when he had finished 
praying in a certain place and one of them said 
unto him, "Lord, teach us to pray, even as 
John also taught his disciples." Jesus said to 
his disciples — "Ask, and it shall be given you; 
seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be 
opened unto you. For everyone that asketh re- 
ceiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and to him 
that knocketh it shall be opened." As Andrew 
Murray declares, "God's giving is inseparably 
connected with our asking" ("Min. of Interces- 
sion," p. 27). God can do for the person who 
prays what He can not do for the person who 
does not pray. Or, as would be the same prop- 
osition stated from a human view-point, the per- 
son who prays is able to receive from God what 
the person who does not pray is not able to 
receive. 

It is also true that some of God's best gifts 
can be given only in answer to importunate 
prayer. That is, men can not receive some of 
God's best gifts except in answer to earnest, im- 
portunate prayer. 

Further, prayer that is purely for personal 
ends can never be that profitable, ennobling 
reality which the poet calls "the Christian's vital 
breath." Christ prayed much but his was the 
prayer of intercession, of supplication, of 
thanksgiving for others. In praying for him- 
self he never lost sight of the needs of a sin-sick 
humanity. Thus in prayer Jesus entered into a 



m KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

complete and unobstructed, filial and loyal com- 
munion with the Father. His prayers were 
always according to God, in harmony with the 
divine will; they were always the prayers of the 
completely righteous one and, therefore, always 
answered, always effectual. 

The same principle is true regarding all our 
praying. Christ has given in his gospel won- 
derful prayer-promises, but all these promises 
are carefully stated and are sure only when the 
conditions are met. The prayer to which 
Christ's promises apply is not heathen prayer. 
It is not for purely personal ends. It must be 
the expression of a certain kind of life. 

And this suggests why some prayers are not 
answered. James writes: "Ye ask, and receive 
not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may spend it 
in your pleasures" (Jas. iv, 3). Selfish prayer 
can not find a way to the Father. The prayer 
that is for purely personal or selfish ends is not 
Christian prayer. Christ never promised that 
such prayers should be answered; it would be 
doing violence to the constitution of God's King- 
dom. If we were to imagine God answering 
purely selfish prayers, we should have to imagine 
God as consenting to promote havoc and discord 
in His moral universe. God will not promote 
havoc and discord in His moral world. His high 
purpose is the establishment of peace and har- 
mony between mankind and Himself, and between 
all men with one another. If you have prayed 



CHRISTIAN PRAYER 123 

and not received the answer to your prayers as 
you desired, it behooves you to ask yourself 
whether your prayers were truly Christian 
prayers. Remember the words of James to cer- 
tain ones whose prayers were not answered: — 
"Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, 
that ye may spend it in your pleasures." 

What then is Christian prayer? What 
prayer can come within the Christ promise or 
declaration that it shall be answered? Too 
much of our praying is not Christian, even if it 
is not positively heathen, or an attempt to enlist 
God in the promotion of our own selfish pur- 
poses. Christian prayer shall be answered. 
But what is truly Christian prayer? It is 
prayer in Christ's name. To ask in Christ's 
name is "to ask a thing, as prompted by the 
mind of Christ and in reliance on the bond which 
unites us to him" ("Thayer's Lexicon," 248). 
For the use of the phrase, "in my name," see 
John xiv, 13, 14; xv, 16; xvi, 23; xxiv, 26. 

Christian prayer must be offered "as prompted 
by the mind of Christ." It must be in harmony 
with Christ's high purpose to bring all who will 
be saved into a vital saving relation to the 
Father. Christ's prayers all had an atoning 
purpose, and looked toward the at-one-ment of 
all men with God, that so there might come ulti- 
mate peace and good will among men. When 
our prayers are in harmony with that high pur- 
pose they are then true Christian prayers and 



124 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

they shall have a part with the prayers of Christ 
in the atonement of mankind with God. "If ye 
abide in me," is Christ's statement, "and my 
words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will and 
it shall be done unto you" (John xv, 7). We 
understand now what is meant by James : "The 
supplication of a righteous man availeth much in 
its working" (Jas. iv, 16). It is the life that 
abides in Christ, and that is in harmony with 
him, that can enlist divine power in the promo- 
tion of its purposes and the fulfillment of its 
desires. 

But what shall be said for the one that has 
prayed long and earnestly for the conversion of 
loved ones who are still unconverted, possibly 
even ridiculing the prayers in their behalf? 
This we should say, that it is the desire of the 
great and loving heart of Christ that everyone 
who will may be saved and be brought into 
the most filial relationship with the Father. 

But Christ and God cannot be thought of as 
doing violence to truth. God, Himself, can not 
coerce a human soul and at the same time treat it 
as free. If we were to imagine a soul forced into 
harmony with God we should have therewith to 
imagine the removal of the very elements neces- 
sary to that soul's salvation. 

If your prayers, in the name of Christ, and 
as prompted by the mind of Christ, seem not 
to have been answered by the turning of your 
friends or loved ones to Christ, remember this, 



CHRISTIAN PRAYER 125 

that the desires of God and the prayers of 
Christ have all met with the same constitutional 
and inherent difficulties as your own. 

Remember this also, that the atoning grace of 
God in Christ by the Spirit can overcome all 
obstacles and win every victory up to the point 
where to go further would be to break down 
the sovereignty of moral freedom, and thus, by 
forcing the soul, remove the very possibility of 
any attainment of the end sought. In all this 
we enter by prayer into the same great work 
as that in which the Father, Son and Holy 
Spirit are engaged. And the same conditions 
and rational limitations prevail with God as 
with us. 

We need not be discouraged then if we seem 
to see our prayers unanswered. The way of 
eternal life with God is the way of Christ. The 
Christ way is the way of prayer. The Chris- 
tian's vital breath is prayer. We are to pray for 
one another, and for all men. We are to enter 
into fellowship with God by prayer. We are to 
be intercessors for others, and, since God sends 
his best gifts to men by men, having sent the 
gift of eternal life by the man Christ Jesus, we 
are to receive from God, in answer to our 
prayers, gifts which we are to carry to others. 
Until Christians are willing to become interces- 
sors in true Christian prayer for others, until 
Christians are willing to take the place of 
humble initiative, God can not bestow upon them, 



126 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

or, from the human view-point, they can not re- 
ceive those gifts (especially of the Holy Spirit, 
Luke xi, 13) which it is necessary that they 
should receive and carry to others both for their 
own and others' saving. So must we widen in 
our prayers until we take in all the world for 
and with Christ. 

I fear we do not pray enough. I fear too 
that our prayers are not always Christian. We 
need to seek the Spirit to help us in our prayers, 
for we know not what to pray for unless the 
Spirit teach us. Let us pray as prompted by 
the mind of Christ, that so we may enter with 
Christ into the work of world redemption. 

"And he spake a parable unto them to the 
end that they ought always to pray, and not to 
faint." 

"Pray one for another." 

"For behold, he prayeth." 



XI 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE RELATION 
OF THE MESSIANIC HOPE TO THE 
ATTAINMENT OF HUMAN RIGHT- 
EOUSNESS 

We are coming to know that the aim of the 
philosopher is a systematic and comprehensive 
way of looking at things. By the processes of 
induction, facts are gathered. The ways in 
which things take place, the order of anteced- 
ence and sequence, and all concomitant varia- 
tions, are observed and noted. The philosopher 
analyzes the facts, reflects upon them and gives 
to them what will purport to be a rational in- 
terpretation. The philosophy of the relation 
of the Messianic hope to the attainment of 
human righteousness will be, therefore, a much 
needed interpretation and explanation of the 
natural and normal relation of that hope to the 
attainment of such a righteousness. 

Our philosophizing in the present case must 
run somewhat as follows. At some point very 
early in the history of the race sin entered the 
life of men, and with sin came a moral blinding, 
the natural result of such disloyalty to the 
natural human sense of right as was involved in 
that beginning of sin. This result was the 
natural curse from sin. But with the curse that 
127 



US KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

came upon the very beginning of sin came also 
the promise or hope of better things than utter 
loss. 

Either that early and universal hope of es- 
sential Messiah was from God, or men have been 
hoping in God vainly all these ages. Nothing 
is more sure than that men have always believed 
that God loved righteousness rather than sin, 
but especially has this been true of that people 
whose hope of a deliverer was very early traced, 
in the traditions of their race, to what they 
believed to be the promise of God accompanying 
the deliverance of judgment upon the Tempter 
in Eden. The inspired writer of Genesis ideal- 
ized the spiritual Tempter in Eden as a serpent, 
and he declares that God, when He pronounced 
judgment upon the Tempter, made this promise: 
"I will put enmity between thee and the woman, 
and between thy seed and her seed; it shall 
bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." 

Thus with man's first fall into sin came the 
foregleams of Messiah. Man rose from that 
first lapse into sin to go forth strengthened by 
the faith that God had in his heart the promise 
of better things, and the hope of that promise 
sustained him through many an hour of tempta- 
tion and trial. 

Very early a religious system of ritual and 
symbol was established which served to keep 
alive and nourish the hope of the Messianic rule 
and kingdom. Gradually, through the selec- 



THE MESSIANIC HOPE 129 

tion of moral fitness, the hope of the fulfillment 
of the promise became relatively narrowed to 
a single line. We read, therefore, the word of 
God to Abraham: "I will make thee a great na- 
tion, and I will bless thee, and make thy name 
great; and thou shalt be a blessing: . 
And in thee shall all families of the earth be 
blessed. . . . And in thy seed shall all the 
nations of the earth be blessed" (Gen. xii, 2, 3; 
xxii, 18). The Messianic hope has undoubt- 
edly vaguely stirred in the breast of every 
people, but it is significant that most peoples 
have looked back to a golden age that was past. 
But in a remarkable degree the sons of Abraham 
proved themselves to be a people with faith 
enough in God to respond to the upward lift of 
a splendid hope. Under the teaching of Him 
who holdeth us all in his arms, this people, who 
could in spite of expulsion from Eden, in spite 
of disappointment and exile, yet believe in prog- 
ress and keep their faces toward the future, have 
in a remarkable degree seen the hope of the 
fulfillment of the divine promise and have been 
thereby unified and nationalized, in spite even 
of dispersion, through the centuries. 

Moses' interpretation of the promise of God 
was as follows: "I will raise them up a prophet 
from among their brethren, like unto thee, and 
will put my words in his mouth; and he shall 
speak unto them all that I shall command him" 
(Dt. xviii, 15). That promise of God spoken 



130 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

to Moses, was delivered by Moses to the people 
when he said before the assembly of "all Israel," 
"The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a 
prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethren, 
like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken" (Dt. 
xviii, 18). Through all the centuries that fol- 
lowed until the coming of Jesus that promise 
was the hope of Israel. The ultimate fulfillment 
of that hope became the inspiration and promise 
of all the prophets until Jesus came. When 
Jesus came it was manifest of him that he was 
"of a truth that prophet that should come into 
the world" (John vi, 14). 

Again, humanity is distinguished from the 
brute by a capacity for the attainment of moral 
righteousness. Human righteousness is moral 
righteousness. 

The Messianic hope was described by Paul as 
the hope of the promise of God made unto the 
fathers. We are inquiring at this time the rela- 
tion of that hope to the progressive attainment 
of human righteousness. 

The history of the moral progress of human- 
ity may be regarded as dividing into three 
periods, (1) The Prehistoric, (2) The Legal- 
istic and (3) The Christian. The conditions 
for the progressive attainment of human right- 
eousness in the prehistoric period are, in the 
nature of the case, beyond the reach of the 
historian's investigation. What were the condi- 
tions of moral progress in Eden we can only in- 



THE MESSIANIC HOPE 131 

fer as we trace the later known conditions back 
into the period of the unknown. With regard 
to the conditions for the attainment of true 
righteousness which had to do in the lives of 
our first parents and the early members of our 
race we know very little. We do not even fully 
know what were the natural human endowments 
in the beginning of our race. We must ration- 
ally assume that there were given (1) a moral 
environment and (2) within each human life 
there was the power of response or moral adjust- 
ment to such environment. 

With the earliest dawn of human history this 
moral environment, which as we have seen is 
one of the rationally assumed conditions for 
the attainment of human righteousness, had put 
on the character of the moral law. This law 
was presented as the commandment, and is the 
distinctive fact in the second or legalistic period 
in the history of the progressive attainment of 
human righteousness. During this legalistic 
period or dispensation of law the highest ideal 
righteousness within each human life was, natur- 
ally enough, conceived to be obedience — un- 
reasoning, unquestioning obedience. The Spirit 
of Truth and moral longing after righteousness 
made use of the commandments and the law to 
deepen the sense of guilt within the human 
breast. Failure to measure up to the law was 
used by the Spirit to reveal the presence of sin. 
Therefore Paul could say, referring to his life 



132 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

under the law, "I had not known sin, but by the 
law" (Rom. vii, 7). 

But humanity is finite and limited, weak of 
will and frail of body, nervous and an easy prey 
to temptation, and the result has been that the 
more humanity has tried perfectly to keep the 
law and all the commandments, the deeper has 
become the conviction of sin and the sense of un- 
avoidable guilt. So long as the mind of man 
conceived of the moral environment as consisting 
wholly of law, and of human righteousness as 
being perfect obedience to the law, just so long 
there could be possible to frail humanity no free- 
dom from the sense of guilt, and no justifica- 
tion or peace within or without. 

But we can not rationally conceive of God, 
after he had created men and had endowed them 
with such capacity for moral life and with such 
longing for ideal human righteousness, — we can 
not rationally conceive of God, after all of that, 
as then leaving the race to struggle on in hope- 
less despair of ever attaining the goal of moral 
righteousness. The holding of such a concep- 
tion as if it were true would be to dishonor a 
moral God. 

We are not surprised, therefore, that from 
the earliest period of known history we find man- 
kind making two distinct lines of effort toward 
the attainment of human righteousness, which in 
its ultimate attainment shall bring peace and 
justification from all sin. I refer (1) To re- 



THE MESSIANIC HOPE 133 

ligious legalism and (2) To prophetism. Re- 
ligious legalism was an effort to attain human 
righteousness by means of an absolute obedi- 
ence to law. We have already seen how in a 
race like our own such an effort was sure to fail. 
It was nevertheless promotive of sturdy and 
heroic character and always stood for the con- 
servative element both in individual and social 
life. But the Spirit of the living God would 
not leave man imprisoned in a moral environ- 
ment of absolute law, faithful attempt to obey 
which would only lead to deeper despair. It is 
not strange, therefore, that the same Spirit, 
which at the first breathed a moral nature into 
man, should also very early whisper into the 
soul of man a promise. That promise spoke of 
better things than failure. It told of a time 
when the soul, incapable in its frailty of achiev- 
ing by itself an absolute moral righteousness, 
should nevertheless attain to a moral righteous- 
ness which should be perfect according to the 
nature of man, even as the righteousness of God 
is perfect according to the nature of God. 

It was the high mission of prophetism to keep 
alive and fan into a flame the hope of the ful- 
fillment of that promise. The prophets of 
Israel were encouraged by that hope and they, 
in turn, stirred up all Israel to wait earnestly 
for the fulfillment of that hope. The hope was 
not only the hope of a line of prophets, as at 
first in Israel, but early it caught the fore- 



134 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

gleams of the coming of "that prophet" who 
should himself become the real fulfillment of the 
world's hope, and who should so spiritualize the 
moral environment of men, so revolutionize men's 
ideals of human righteousness, that ever after 
there should be "no condemnation to them which 
are in Christ Jesus, . . . who walk not 
after the flesh, but after the Spirit" (Rom. viii, 
1-4). 

Such, in broad outlines, was "the hope of the 
promise made of God" unto the fathers. Such 
was the Messianic hope of Israel, a vision of 
which gave substance to the message of all the 
prophets from the time of Moses to that of John 
the Baptist. Such was the hope so demonstra- 
bly fulfilled in Jesus, of whom Moses and all the 
prophets prophesied, and in complete response 
to whom thousands and millions of earth's sin- 
discouraged souls, since his coming, have found 
peace and joy, and, being made free from sin, 
have become free servants of God, having their 
fruit unto righteousness, and the end everlast- 
ing life. Before the coming of Jesus, the hope 
of Messiah, the Messianic hope of Israel and of 
the World, was manifestly unfulfilled. But 
since Jesus came there has been no pure and 
noble aspiration of the human heart after peace 
and moral righteousness that he could not 
satisfy. 

In the history of man's progressive attain- 
ment of moral righteousness nothing is more 



THE MESSIANIC HOPE 135 

clearly demonstrated than that Jesus of Naza- 
reth was the Messiah foretold by the prophets, 
and the fulfillment of the Messianic hope. He, 
above all others, was "that prophet," whom God 
promised, who should be like unto Moses, and 
unto him the people were to hearken. Jesus was 
like unto Moses, and yet Moses could never have 
become the world's hope, as is Jesus. "For the 
law was given by Moses, but grace and truth 
came by Jesus Christ" (John i, 17). 

We have thus looked upon the philosophy of 
the relation of the Messianic hope to the pro- 
gressive attainment of human righteousness. 
And thus do we not see how close has been the 
relation of that hope to the attainment of human 
righteousness? That hope was for ages the 
luminous fore-gleam of human, moral possibili- 
ties, and it kept the soul of man from giving up 
in despair. And in its fulfillment it has so 
spiritualized the moral atmosphere of human life 
as to render possible that which was before im- 
possible, even bringing to pass "That the right- 
eousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who 
walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit" 
(Rom. viii, 4). 



XII 

THE BIBLE— WHAT IS CLAIMED 
FOR IT 

The Christian world makes the astounding 
claim that the Christian Bible is not only a 
unique book in literature, but that in a wholly 
unique sense it was given by inspiration of God. 

The Christian's claim, upon which the whole 
fabric of his hope depends, is nothing less than 
that the Bible contains a sufficient, and the only 
sufficient, revelation of God's will and disposition 
toward men, and of man's right relation toward 
God, and that it is "also profitable for teach- 
ing, for reproof, for correction, for instruction 
which is in righteousness: that the man of God 
may be complete, furnished completely unto 
every good work." 

It is not claimed that the Bible was inspired 
in any particular manner. All the Christian 
world is agreed that the Bible was divinely in- 
spired, but it is not agreed as to any special 
theory of inspiration. 

Neither is it claimed that all of the Bible is 
of equal value. Long statistical lists in the 
Books of Chronicles are not as profitable for 
teaching as are the lofty anthems of the Psalmist 
or the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. 

God has given a message in the Bible which 
136 



THE BIBLE 137 

man's uninspired wisdom could not have dis- 
covered, but in the conveying of that message 
human agents were employed. It is not claimed 
that they were always free from error. In this 
sense the Bible is certainly not inerrant. But 
let quibblers and doubters and disturbed be- 
lievers remember that the Bible was never in- 
tended for a text book in geology — and yet the 
most essential element in the modern scientific 
theory of creation was written down by a Jew 
three thousand years before the birth of modern 
science, and he said then what modern science 
repeats to-day: "In the beginning God created." 
In the Bible God did not write to the geolo- 
gist as a geologist, nor to the chemist as a 
chemist, nor to the mineralogist as a mineralo- 
gist, nor to the astronomer as an astronomer, 
but rather did He write to man as man. The 
Bible is God's fullest word to the soul. In it 
God has revealed to man the divine will and 
purpose touching human destiny. In the Bible 
God has told us that about Himself which nature 
never told to any man, but which we needed to 
know. We could have learned that God was 
creator and, possibly, that He was the ruler of 
the world, but without special revelation no one 
ever came to know that God is love and that 
He careth for men better than an earthly father 
can care for his own children. Thereby God 
has justified His ways unto men and has satis- 
fied the responding human soul with fatness. 



138 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

No one who will view the Bible as containing 
God's progressive revelation to the human soul, 
which message culminates in Jesus Christ, will 
be able to place the finger of criticism upon a 
single place where real improvement could be 
made. And it is insisted, without any fear of 
successful contradiction, that, when the Bible is 
thus viewed within the manifest scope of the di- 
vine purpose, it will be found to be absolutely 
without error. 

It is not claimed that there is no truth in 
other books of religion, but it is claimed that 
the only sufficient and adequate revelation for 
the soul's needs is contained in the Bible. The 
sacred books of the world are to-day known and 
read of men, and every one of them except the 
Christian Bible is manifestly inadequate. With 
the advance of science, knowledge and light, 
these must decrease while the Bible continues to 
increase. 

The Bible more than any other book is an 
all-man's-book. It speaks to the soul. It has a 
message for the untutored savage, and the man 
of the university can never get beyond it. It 
speaks to all ages and conditions and tells that 
which nature never told — that God is our Father 
and that we are the children of His care. It is 
the most all-pervasive book known among men, 
and it brings to all, who will receive its message, 
a knowledge of the infinite grace of God re- 
vealed in Jesus the Christ. 



THE BIBLE 139 

What has the Bible not been? And what is it 
not to-day in art, in literature, in law, in ethics? 
Whenever an artist would dip his brush in im- 
mortality he covers his canvas with a scene from 
its pages. When John Bunyan would write for 
the centuries and also for the multitudes he must 
take for his hero a Bible pilgrim. When John 
Ruskin would write the finest English of his 
century he must learn his style and gain the in- 
spiration for his message from the English 
Bible. Righteous law must trace its beginning 
to Moses, and its culmination to the Sermon on 
the Mount. The Bible doctrine of the universal 
Fatherhood of God and the consequential uni- 
versal brotherhood of man is the foundation 
doctrine of ethics at the beginning of the twenti- 
eth century. The cause of this so great and 
beneficial influence must be adequate to the effect. 
It is nothing less than the character of divine 
authority given to the Scriptural words of grace 
and revelation by their primary and originating 
author — God. 

The gift of eternal life comes through faith 
in the Lord Jesus Christ. Inspiration comes of 
the Holy Spirit; and that which is most "profit- 
able for teaching, for reproof, for correction, 
for instruction which is in righteousness," comes 
through the mediumship of the Holy Bible. The 
Bible is not as profitable as some other books for 
instruction in geology, or physics, or mechanics, 
or surgery, or astronomy, but it is the most 



140 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

profitable book ever known among men for in- 
struction "which is in righteousness." And 
since instruction in righteousness must ever be 
essential to the conserving of the civilization 
which we have, and to the further progress of 
the race, therefore, it may be truly said that 
next to the gift of God's Son, by whom comes 
life, and next to the gift of the Holy Spirit, by 
whom comes the desire to live that life nobly and 
well, is God's gift of the Bible, by which we may 
ever learn how to make the most for time and 
eternity of the life inspired, which God has 
granted through the Son and the Holy Spirit. 

Finally, if you are not Christian, or if you 
think you do not believe the Bible, will you pass 
judgment upon a book the contents of which 
you do not know? Surely it would be more 
reasonable, and more to your own best interest, 
to study the book which looms so large in the 
past and present of the world's best thought and 
achievement. 

Certainly every Christian should faithfully 
study this book, so pre-eminent for wise and 
beneficent instruction in all righteousness. 

Fathers and mothers should study the Bible 
themselves, and teach it to their children around 
the family altar. So may righteousness be con- 
served and promoted and the truth of God be 
known among men. 



XIII 

ORIGIN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT AND 
THE FIXING OF THE CANON 

It is probable that a majority of the persons 
who believe in the teachings of the New Testa- 
ment could not give a reasonably historical ac- 
count of its origin; nor could they tell how the 
New Testament Canon came to be fixed as it 
is. And yet in a day when faith calls for the 
uncovering of historical foundations as never 
before, such knowledge could not but prove 
steadying and helpful to the faith of many. 
Let us consider, then, first, the origin of the New 
Testament, and, second, the fixing of the New 
Testament Canon. 

In the first place, it must be remembered that 
the apostolic age was not a time of making books, 
and when a book was made its extensive publica- 
tion involved the prolonged labors of the copy- 
ist. If we also bear in mind that for at least 
a generation after the manifestation of our Lord 
there were those yet living who had been eye- 
witnesses of the events of his earthly ministry, 
we shall see that it was only natural that tradi- 
tion should be highly esteemed among early 
Christians as a source of information regarding 
Christian history and teaching. Papias, who 
wrote during the early part of the second 
141 



142 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

century, says: "If I met with anyone who had 
been a follower of the elders anywhere, I made 
it a point to inquire what were the declarations 
of the elders ; what was said by Andrew, Peter, 
or Philip; what by Thomas, James, John, Mat- 
thew, or any other of the disciples of our Lord; 
what was said by Aristion, and the Presbyter 
John, disciples of the Lord; for I do not think 
that I derived so much benefit from books as 
from the living voice of those that are still sur- 
viving" ("Eusebius," Book iii, chap. 39). 

However, the weakness of all hearsay evidence 
attaches to tradition, and the farther we get 
from the original source the more apparent this 
becomes. Therefore, it soon became necessary 
for the preservation of the Christian teaching, 
pure and undefiled, that those matters which had 
thus far been held as authentic tradition should 
be transferred to writing. Luke tells us in the 
preface to his Gospel that "many had taken in 
hand" to do this. It is also essentially Luke's 
own reason for writing The Gospel. 

Another class of writings early played an im- 
portant role in the growing life and thought of 
the church. It was a custom prevalent among 
the early bishops and leaders of the church to 
address letters to distant churches in which they 
might for any particular reason be interested. 
This is the manner in which a large part of the 
New Testament came into existence. It was 
customary to read these letters to the churches 



ORIGIN OF NEW TESTAMENT 145 

in the public congregations. Eusebius quoted 
from a letter of Dionysius, bishop of Corinth, 
written to Soter, bishop of Rome, as follows: 
"To-day we have passed the Lord's holy day, in 
which we have read your epistle, in reading which 
we shall always have our minds stored with ad- 
monition, as we shall, also, from that written to 
us before by Clement" (Book iv, chap. 23). It 
is said of Dionysius; "But he was most useful 
to all in the catholic epistles that he addressed 
to the churches." Paul ordered the Thes- 
salonians that his letter to them should "be read 
unto all the holy brethren" (1 Thess. v, 27). 

It was also customary for these letters to 
circulate among the churches. In Paul's letter 
to the Colossians he says: "And when this let- 
ter is read among you, cause that it also be 
read in the church of the Laodiceans; and that 
ye likewise read the epistle from Laodicea" (Col. 
iv, 16). How the Christian world would go into 
excitement if that letter of Paul to the Laodi- 
ceans should be found ! The book called Pastor, 
though a disputed writing, and one which did not 
finally find a place in the Canon, also is 
mentioned by Eusebius as having been "in 
public use" in the churches (Book iii, chap. 3). 

So much as to the origin of certain early 
Christian writings. What was it that raised the 
question of their authorship or canonicity into 
real importance? The answer must be, heresy 
within the church and heathenism without. 



144 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

Quite early it became apparent that the law of 
self-preservation demanded that catholic Christ- 
ianity should present a united front. The great 
and apparent need of the church soon came to 
be a standard upon which catholic or universal 
Christianity might substantially agree, and to 
which appeal might be made, to determine the 
true scope and contents of the Christian system, 
as against the corrupting influence of heresy 
within the church and the manifold assaults of 
heathenism without. Christian scholars gave 
earnest study to this subject. The experience 
and usage of the wide-spreading church were 
carefully investigated. Such great theologians 
as Origen and Irenaeus furnished important con- 
tributions to the discussion. Certainly before 
the end of the second century the church at large 
had come to substantial agreement concerning 
the books which might be accepted as authorita- 
tive Christian Scriptures ; and the books thus 
accepted constituted the New Testament 
Canon. 

In the nature of the case one would not ex- 
pect upon this subject absolute agreement. 
Eusebius published his Ecclesiastical History as 
late as &%0 a.d. He mentions a large number 
of books which were then regarded as of doubt- 
ful authorship and canonicity. By a careful 
reading of Eusebius I have found that, among 
the books which more than two centuries after 



ORIGIN OF NEW TESTAMENT 145 

the death of all the apostles were yet counted 
by some as at least of doubtful canonicity, were 
the following which finally found a place in the 
New Testament Canon: The Epistle to the He- 
brews ; the Epistle of James ; the Second Epistle 
of Peter; the Second and Third Epistles of 
John ; the Epistle of Jude, and the Book of 
Revelation. And the following which in the time 
of Eusebius were still of doubtful canonicity did 
not finally find a place in the New Testament 
Canon: The Epistle of Clement of Rome to the 
Corinthians ; the Epistle of Barnabas ; the Pastor 
of Hermas ; the Apocalypse of Peter ; the Insti- 
tutions of the Apostles ; the Acts of Paul ; the 
Gospel according to the Hebrews ; the Acts of 
Peter, and the Gospel according to Peter. 

Some time after Eusebius the church took it 
in hand to close the Canon. The Council of 
Laodicea in 363 a.d. declared that only "canoni- 
cal" books should be read in the churches. The 
test of canonicity has always been the accept- 
ance or rejection of any book by the church. 
Upon the most essential records of the New 
Testament the church has maintained substantial 
agreement. The less essential records have 
sometimes been disputed. Christians every- 
where believe that the best that the inspiration 
of the apostolic age could furnish is preserved 
in the canonical books of the New Testament. 
Who that has compared the New Testament with 



146 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

other writings of the early Christian era can 
doubt but that the Holy Spirit guided in the 
selection of the writings which should constitute 
the Christian Word of God to men? 



XIV 
A CONVICTION ABOUT SIN 

A correct view of sin is exceedingly important. 
It has been estimated that ninety per cent, of all 
doctrinal errors have come from defective views 
of sin. When one's sense of sin breaks down, 
his sense of righteousness will become lopsided 
and lean. A man who does not believe in sin 
is a man who, if he is consistent, does not be- 
lieve in righteousness. It is impossible to con- 
ceive of goodness except as it is conceived as 
over against the idea of badness. 

How great shall be one's appreciation of re- 
demption through Christ will tie determined by 
the degree of his appreciation of need through 
sin. If humanity is not undone in sin, then the 
work of Christ is a delusion, and there is no sal- 
vation, since there is no need of any. If there 
is no sin then Christ was wrong, and all the 
prophets and all the reformers, who have burned 
with zeal for righteousness have been mistaken, 
and the conscience of humanity has strangely 
erred. 

If there is no sin, then there is no hell. If 
there is no hell, then there is no heaven. Hell 
is the state of those who have disobeyed their 
God-given conscience; that is, hell is the state 
of those who have sinned. Heaven is the state 
147 



148 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

of those who have obeyed their God-given con- 
science; that is, it is the state of those who have 
done righteousness. But there is no one who has 
not come under the guilt of sin. All who have 
sinned need a Saviour, but none others do. 

It has been said that ours is a time when the 
sense of sin rests very lightly upon the con- 
sciences of men. If that is true, is it also true 
that any real sense of righteousness must rest 
lightly upon us? Should it not be remembered 
that when sin shall have ceased to be hideous, 
then righteousness will have lost its glory? 

The religious faculty is natural in all men, 
but it does not manifest itself in the same way 
among all. There have been peoples among 
whom there was little, if any, trace of sin-con- 
sciousness. Scholars say that this was true in 
Egyptian literature. They also tell us that the 
poetry of Homer contains no villain. 

A definite work of the Spirit of Truth in every 
age has been to bring to men a conviction about 
sin, and after that about righteousness. Ritual 
and symbol have been used, commandments have 
been given, psalmists have sung, prophets have 
warned, and judgment has been visited upon 
transgressors for the very purpose of creating 
such a sense of the hideousness and guilt of sin 
as should prepare the way for all true penitents 
to receive salvation and life. The man who has 
no sense of the death-dealing character of sin 
can have no sense of his own need of divine help. 



A CONVICTION ABOUT SIN 149 

Therefore, it is not strange that the first ele- 
ments in the Biblical revelation pertain to sin. 
And this revelation is clearly intended to create 
in humanity an abiding sense of the terrors and 
devastations of sin, and to promote a sense of 
guilt for sin. It has been thus that the law, 
which has approved itself to the human con- 
science, has been the instrument of the Spirit of 
Truth to teach men the reality of sin. There- 
fore, Paul declared: "I had not known sin, but 
by the law" (Rom. vii, 7). And Christ saw 
that a special work of the Spirit when he should 
come to the church after Pentecost, would be to 
bring to the world a conviction about sin: "And 
he, when he is come, will convict the world in 
respect of sin" (John xvi, 8). 

As a natural result of the Biblical revelation 
about sin, and of the consequent sense of sin 
among men, the Bible has well been called "a 
book of great penitents." Such were David, 
Isaiah and Paul. Since Bible times, under the 
special illumination of the Spirit, naturally 
enough we have had such great penitents as 
Augustine, Luther, Bunyan, Wesley and Moody. 
These have been great seekers of life and salva- 
tion for themselves and for the world only as 
they have first been brought under tremendous 
and abiding conviction of their own and of the 
world's need. 

The forms of the manifestation of a convic- 
tion about sin have been as various as have been 



150 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

the temperaments and conditions of men. We 
need care little for the form which the manifesta- 
tion of the sense of sin shall assume, whether it 
shall be the jerks, visions, voices, fear of hell, 
dread of displeasing friends, crying, groaning, 
or any other of the many forms which have been 
seen in the past, or which may be seen in the 
future. But this should never be forgotten, that 
they who would hope to see the glory of right- 
eousness must somehow first have seen the hide- 
ousness of sin. 

The revelation of the grace of God and the 
mission of Christ Jesus and the purpose of 
moral heroes since the world began have been to 
save the world from the deceitfulness and ruin of 
sin. Every moral aspiration, every hymn of 
praise, every true prayer, every philanthropic 
institution, every endeavor toward reform and 
every true Christian church throughout the 
world means, if it means anything, a desire to 
be saved from "The wrath of God" that 
"abideth" upon all indolence, shiftlessness, un- 
thankfulness, refusal to have God in all one's 
thoughts, a denial of human brotherhood, in- 
difference to human misery, and upon all sin, and 
to save the world from such. 

The world everywhere, then, should learn, and 
the church not forget, that if men and women are 
to know God and his righteousness they must 
somehow be deeply convinced of sin and their 
own consequent need. Let it not be forgotten, 



A CONVICTION ABOUT SIN 151 

then, that only where there is an abiding convic- 
tion about sin can there be any expectation of 
an abiding appreciation of the grace of God in 
Christ. Men need everywhere a conviction about 
sin in order that they may have a conviction 
about righteousness, and judgment, and God. 



XV 

THE PHILOSOPHY OF RETRIBUTION 

The making of heaven or hell takes place 
under the working of the one comprehensive law 
of retribution. Hell may no longer be thought 
of as a place where an angry God puts the 
souls of those who may have aroused His wrath ; 
nor is it a place where He puts those who were 
unconditionally condemned to its torments be- 
fore the world was made. Heaven is not a place 
reserved for those who were in some uncondi- 
tional way elected to its glories ages ago. Both 
of these ideas have been widely held in some 
periods of the past. The great part of the 
Christian world do not so believe to-day. 
Neither is hell a place warmed by the fires of 
burning brimstone, though such unspiritual and 
materialistic notions were in certain times widely 
held. Nor is heaven a city in which the streets 
are paved with gold, though such unspiritual 
and materialistic notions of heaven have all too 
largely prevailed in the past. 

As symbols and figures of description of that 
which will abide when all that is physical is done 
away, fire or golden pavements are all very good. 
Indeed it is necessary to use just such symbols 
whenever we wish to speak of and describe the 
152 



PHILOSOPHY OF RETRIBUTION 153 

characters of the non-physical and invisible facts 
of life and environment. Who can find a word 
that will do better in thought expression than to 
say of love that it grows cold or is warm? We 
know what is meant when one says of another — 
"he is an all-round man," aiid then perhaps of 
the same person it may be said — "he is four- 
square from the ground up." Why is it that 
we should have no trouble to understand these 
figurative expressions in any field of human 
knowledge except that of religion? Why do we 
understand what is meant when one is warned 
to keep away from certain people unless he would 
get burned, but do not understand what is meant 
when Jesus should warn us to avoid a certain 
kind of life unless we would fall into the fires 
of hell which are the fires of retribution or of 
consequences ? Why do we understand figurative 
language as figurative in the one instance, but 
not in the other? 

The world is coming to understand what Jesus 
meant when he said : "The kingdom of God 
cometh not with observation: neither shall they 
say, Lo, here! or, There! for lo, the kingdom 
of God is within you" (Lk. xvii, 20, 21). The 
world is coming to understand that heaven is 
within one, or hell is within one, as the case may 
be. And whether it shall be heaven or hell 
within one is to be determined by one for one's 
self under the one all-comprehending law of the 
soul's retribution. And that law itself in every 



154 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

case is an expression of God's unchanging jus- 
tice, fairness and love. 

So then heaven is as real as ever, but in a 
real sense every man must make his own heaven 
in compliance with the law of retribution which 
is also the law of consequences. So also hell 
is as real as ever, but in a true sense every man, 
who suffers in hell, makes his own hell under the 
same necessary, and divinely-gracious law of the 
soul's retribution. As a scriptural and philo- 
sophical statement of this universal law of ret- 
ribution I have selected two passages from the 
inspired writings : "Be not deceived ; God is not 
mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall 
he also reap. For he that soweth unto his own 
flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he 
that soweth unto the Spirit shall of the Spirit 
reap eternal life" (Gal. vi, 7, 8) ; and "he that 
is steadfast in righteousness shall attain unto 
life; and he that pursueth evil doeth it to his 
own death" (Prov. xi, 19). No law of life can 
be of more practical or stirring importance to 
all of us than this one of the soul's retribution. 
For just so sure as heaven is the fitting destiny 
for the righteous, so sure, under this law, are 
the selfish, the impure and the unrighteous mak- 
ing hell for the destiny and final state of their 
souls. 

But while all this is of real importance to all 
persons, yet it is of greatest importance to those 
who are still young in years, and especially to 



PHILOSOPHY OF RETRIBUTION 155 

those who are still in the great formative period 
of life, from twelve to twenty or twenty-five 
years of age. John Ruskin once addressed the 
students of a military college, and in that address 
he urged the great need of thoughtfulness and 
careful consideration of this law of consequences 
on the part of youth. Mr. Ruskin said: "I 
have no patience with people who talk of 'the 
thoughtlessness of youth' indulgently. I had 
infinitely rather hear of thoughtless old age, and 
the indulgence due to that. When a man has 
done his work, and nothing can be materially 
altered in his fate, let him neglect his task and 
j est with his fate if he will ; but what excuse can 
you find for thoughtlessness and willfulness at 
the very time when all future fortune hangs on 
your decisions ? A youth thoughtless ! when his 
whole career depends on the opportunity of a 
moment ! A youth thoughtless ! when all the 
happiness of his home depends on his self-mas- 
tery and control of his passions now! A youth 
thoughtless when his every act is as a torch to 
fire the laid train of future consequences, and 
when every imagination is a fountain of life or 
of death! No! young men, be thoughtless in 
any after years, rather than now — though, in- 
deed, there is only one place when a man may 
be safely and blamelessly thoughtless — and that 
is his deathbed. No thinking should be left to be 
done there." (Methodist Review, March 1905, 
p. 325). 



156 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

Let every young person, especially, know and 
consider that with the glorious opportunity that 
has come to win true life and make heaven one's 
final destiny, has come, as involved therein, the 
necessity of making either heaven or hell for 
one's future home. In the making of one or the 
other all of us are now engaged. If your life 
is thoughtless and selfish, loving pleasure more 
than God, then are you minding the things that 
are vain and making a hell within you that shall 
burn with the fires of remorse as long as the soul 
remains to recognize its loss of love, and fellow- 
ship and God. No hell can be conceived that 
can be worse than that. 

A selfish, loveless, pleasure-loving prince is 
said to have been given a beautiful palace in 
which to live. The palace had no windows open- 
ing out to the world where people dwelled, but 
beautiful gardens filled an inner court which was 
surrounded by the palace. The court was open 
to the sky. The prince was confined in this 
palace. It seemed to him at first very pleasant, 
but gradually the open space of the inner court 
appeared to become smaller. Finally it seemed 
as if he would be crushed to death in the grad- 
ually contracting space. He looked for help. 
But no help could come from any direction but 
from above. Finally he looked above and there 
was his own elder brother waiting to help him 
to escape from that place of intolerable narrow- 
ness. He was a prisoner and his story is a 



PHILOSOPHY OF RETRIBUTION 157 

parable. His own unsocial and loveless disposi- 
tion had shut him in a palace in which no win- 
dows opened to the world of humanity without. 
His selfishness had suggested many pleasant 
things for him within the palace for his lonely 
pleasure. Self-centered and selfish, unsocial and 
loveless, his palace walls began to narrow until 
finally it was a question of being crushed to death 
or of being helped from above. Jesus, the lover 
of the human soul, reached down into his prison 
house of sin and selfishness the hand of love and 
fellowship, and he grasped the hand and was 
saved. He was making hell for himself, and his 
selfish pride had already shut him off from any 
possibility of effectual help or rescue except by 
the hand of Jesus let down from above to touch 
him back to love and fellowship. Milton says : 
"The mind is its own place, and in itself can 
make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven." That 
prince with such splendid environment and with 
such opportunity of making heaven within him 
had already gone far in making hell for himself, 
and was only rescued through the vitalizing and 
redemptive fellowship with Jesus which he fortu- 
nately accepted before it was finally too late. 

The Palace of Art, described by Tennyson, 
was the gilded hell which the builder constructed 
for his own selfish, loveless soul. It was selfishly 
designed for the purpose of self-culture and 
proud refinement. But the poverty and loss 
which come through living with no thought for 



158 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

others were forgotten, and, therefore, under the 
sure law of retribution, the inevitable conse- 
quences of living such a loveless and unsocial life 
were sure to follow. The psychological law is 
unfailing. The builder of such a palace is ever 
the maker of his own hell. The philosophy of 
retribution is clear. He who is wise will be 
urged thereby to a life of service, not for self 
but for others, the sure and appropriate destiny 
of which is heaven and the fellowship of heaven. 



XVI 

A BRIEF EXAMINATION OF SPENCER'S 
DEFINITION OF EVOLUTION 

In this essay it is not purposed to set forth 
an exposition of the Synthetic Philosophy, or 
even of the theory of Evolution. That would 
widen too much the limits of the present examina- 
tion. Nor is it purposed to enter into a full 
criticism of Mr. Spencer's First Principles. It 
is fully recognized that for half a century the 
name of Herbert Spencer has ranked high among 
the leaders of human thought. It may be 
doubted if the thinking of any other man has 
left so deep an impression upon the scientific, 
religious and philosophic thought of the last 
generation. The author of the Synthetic Philos- 
ophy was a great systematizer of human knowl- 
edges. He claimed to think meanly of meta- 
physics but he was himself, nevertheless a 
metaphysician. The characteristic greatness of 
his work was, however, as a systematizer of 
observed facts ; its marked weakness was in a 
faulty underlying metaphysics. He assumed 
that truth to be known must belong to the 
phenomenal, which meant that it must be pic- 
turable. This of course banishes by hypothesis 
all rational metaphysics into the realm of the 
unknowable. Nevertheless in great degree the 
159 



160 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

Synthetic Philosophy was developed with con- 
scious reference to laws and principles of the 
so-called Unknowable. Spencer insisted that the 
reasonings of his system furnished no support 
either to the materialistic or to the idealistic 
(which he calls "spiritualistic") hypothesis 
touching the ultimate nature of being. Touch- 
ing the materialist and the spiritualist hypoth- 
eses he says: "Their implications are no more 
materialistic than they are spiritualistic; and no 
more spiritualistic than they are materialistic." 
In trying to get free from metaphysics of any 
sort Spencer fell a victim to a bad metaphysics. 
His doctrine of the unknowable ground of the 
known is clearly a metaphysical doctrine not less 
than is Kant's doctrine of the noumenal reality. 
Spencer was as sure of the existence of the 
Unknowable as he was that it is unknowable. He 
says: "Common sense asserts the existence of 
a reality; objective science proves that this 
reality can not be what we think it; subjective 
science shows why we can not think of it as it 
is and yet are compelled to think of it as ex- 
isting; and in this assertion of a reality utterly 
inscrutable in nature, religion finds an assertion 
essentially coinciding with her own. We are 
obliged to regard every phenomenon as a mani- 
festation of some power by which we are acted 
upon; though omnipresence is unthinkable." If 
only that is thinkable which can be pictured then 
is omnipresence unthinkable, but it may well be 



SPENCER'S DEFINITION 161 

that in just this is its distinction, namely, that it 
is not picturable but is only thinkable. Com- 
mon sense metaphysics can not picture omnipres- 
ence, infinity or the absolute, but all these are 
proper objects for a rational metaphysics. 

As related to the foregoing, we notice Spen- 
cer's discussion of the "persistence of force," 
which looms large in his thinking. He says : 
"By the persistence of force we really mean the 
persistence of some cause which transcends our 
knowledge and conception. In asserting it we 
assert an unconditional reality without beginning 
or end. 

"Thus, quite unexpectedly, we come down once 
more to that ultimate truth in which, as we saw, 
religion and science coalesce. On examining the 
data underlying a rational theory of things, we 
find them all at last resolvable into that datum 
without which consciousness was shown to be im- 
possible — the continued existence of an unknow- 
able as the necessary correlative of the knowable. 

"The sole truth which transcends experience 
by underlying it is thus the persistence of force. 
This being the basis of experience must be the 
basis of any scientific organization of experi- 
ences. To this an ultimate analysis brings us 
down, and on this a rational synthesis must 
build up." It should be noted here that in the 
field of rational metaphysics the idealist finds 
this "unknowable" by rational inference to be 
absolute free intelligence. For him the absolute 



162 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

"which transcends experience by underlying it" 
is rationally known to be free intelligence ; space- 
less, timeless, self-existing, self-directing agent; 
free intelligence. With this difference of prem- 
ise the idealist would say with the words of 
Spencer, that "This being the basis of experi- 
ence must be the basis of any scientific organiza- 
tion of experiences. To this an ultimate analy- 
sis brings us down, and on this a rational 
synthesis must build up." 

In Spencer's view "philosophy is completely 
unified knowledge." If science is to be viewed 
as "classified knowledge," then, according to this 
definition, science and philosophy would be one 
and the same. Science and philosophy, as thus 
conceived, may not go beyond the bounds of in- 
ductive investigation. When the scientist or 
philosopher, as thus conceived, assumes to inter- 
pret the ultimate truth of facts gathered by the 
inductive process, he is out of his sphere. Con- 
fusion at this point has been the source of much 
profitless worry and debate in the scientific, 
philosophical and religious fields. More prop- 
erly understood, science gathers and classifies the 
facts which come within the reach of human ob- 
servation and experience; philosophy interprets 
these according to the rational implications and 
conclusions to which the laws of thought natu- 
rally and properly lead. Thus there need be 
no conflict between science and philosophy, and 



SPENCER'S DEFINITION 163 

both may buttress and support a rational and 
holy faith. 

Spencer thought of himself as an evolutionist, 
and it is as an evolutionist that he will be long- 
est remembered by the world. In the Synthetic 
Philosophy the task which the author took upon 
himself was nothing less than the giving to the 
world of a "completely unified knowledge." The 
universal law under which Spencer believed all 
knowledge might be thus unified was formulated 
by him as follows: "Evolution is an integra- 
tion of matter and concomitant dissipation of 
motion; during which the matter passes from an 
indefinite incoherent homogeneity to a definite 
coherent heterogeneity; and during which the re- 
tained motion undergoes a parallel transforma- 
tion." 

Concerning this celebrated formula it is de- 
sired to ask frankly two questions: (1) What 
does it mean? and (2) is it valid for the under- 
standing? It is not now our purpose to con- 
trovert, but only to analyze and understand. 
And, first of all, it would seem, from the lan- 
guage used, as if it were intended to be merely a 
cosmic formula, having reference only to the ma- 
terial world of matter. The language used 
would seem to preclude any other application. 
We will not consider here the problem involved in 
such a universal application of the law of evolu- 
tion, as thus stated, as Spencer undertook to 



164 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

make in the various fields of ethics, sociology, 
psychology, religion, though it would be inter- 
esting to inquire into the metaphysical presup- 
positions of his reasonings in these fields. 

Our present examination must not be so com- 
prehensive. What then is the meaning of the 
formula of evolution, as stated by Spencer? 
What is an integration? It is defined as being 
some sort of a change of a manifold into some- 
thing simple. It is the reduction of chaos 
(whatever that may mean), to form and 
order. 

But we have here, by definition, an integration 
of matter. What kind of matter? In the next 
clause we learn that the matter assumed is "an 
indefinite, incoherent homogeneity." But in 
what sense is it "indefinite"? And in what sense 
"incoherent" ? 

Is matter here studied as to its phenomenal 
character or as to its metaphysical? If as to 
its phenomenal character, then we have an at- 
tempted description of a process, and certain 
chaotic, formless, mutually unrelated bits of one 
kind of matter (which is a description unwar- 
ranted in reason, since we may not affirm so 
much as "homogeneity" of matter which is really 
"indefinite, incoherent") are said to change into 
orderly, simple, formful, related bits of different 
kinds of matter, and during the change there 
is said to be a loss of some motion, and the mo- 
tion which is retained is said to be changed from 



SPENCER'S DEFINITION 165 

an indefinite, orderless, and directionless kind 
of motion into a definite, orderly motion. 

It would appear then that the definition, 
properly understood, can have little or no cer- 
tain meaning, even if it is to be understood as 
describing a phenomenal process, since the basal 
assumption, namely, "an indefinite, incoherent 
homogeneity," is impossible for clear thought. 
We can not rationally affirm "homogeneity" of 
matter which is really "indefinite" and "in- 
coherent," and we can not affirm of a "homo- 
geneity" that it is really "indefinite" and "in- 
coherent." 

On the other hand, if the definition looks 
deeper than to the description of a mere process 
to something metaphysical, then we have more 
questions to ask as to the basal assumption with 
which the definer begins. Matter assumed, we 
have again to ask, What kind of matter? We 
are told that it is "an indefinite, incoherent 
homogeneity." If now "indefinite" means with- 
out form, and if "incoherent" means without 
mutual gravitation, we would have our matter 
stripped of everything but just pure being. 
Now whether pure being is a homogeneity or 
not we need not attempt to say. Of pure be- 
ing we can affirm nothing for we can know noth- 
ing of it. For human thought the content of 
pure being equals nothing. Now how nothing 
can evolve into something is a great mystery, 
and it is one which the empiricists on the sense 



166 KNOWLEDGE AND BELIEF 

plane can not escape. The common sense em- 
piricist metaphysician, if his primal assumption 
of being is granted, must not expect to find 
anything in the sequent that was not in some 
way in pure being, the antecedent. If he could 
find anything in the sequent which was not in 
some way in the antecedent (pure being) that 
something would itself be a "groundless becom- 
ing" ("Theory of Thought and Knowledge," by 
Bowne, page 94). 

Neither will the assumption of a "potential 
energy" in the antecedent help out. If actual 
actuality in the sequent is anything more than 
potential actuality assumed in the antecedent 
then something really new has been added in the 
process, which can not be, since, if so, that some- 
thing new thus added would be a groundless be- 
coming. 

There is no way out of this difficulty upon 
the mechanical and sense plane. A thing can 
not be and not be at the same time, and, upon 
the sense plane, that which is not can never 
become that which is. Thus we see that upon 
the sense plane we could never be able to get 
such an evolution as that assumed to be defined. 

But let us assume the process to be started. 
Let motion be assumed. The last clause of the 
definition assumes that this motion is at first 
indefinite, directionless, purposeless. Upon the 
mechanical and sense plane what could ever make 
it otherwise? If motion were not assumed how 



SPENCER'S DEFINITION 167 

could it be gotten? How could it be dissipated 
when once gotten? Again, that which is not 
can never become that which is. 

We conclude that the definition under ex- 
amination can have no real meaning for clear 
thought, and hence no real validity for the un- 
derstanding; not even as an explanation or de- 
scription of a process viewed merely as phenom- 
enal. 

As a metaphysical explanation of the world 
it remains upon the sense plane, and can have 
no validity. It does not explain how that which 
is not can ever become that which is, a provi- 
sion for which must underlie any valid explana- 
tion of the world. We think that Professor 
Bowne suggests the true metaphysical explana- 
tion, which is "to refer all motion, progress, de- 
velopment, evolution, to a supreme self-deter- 
mination which ever lives and ever founds the 
order of things." 



XVII 

"WE ALL ARE PROPHETS" 

We all are prophets of a lesser size; 

And some are nobly statured, bold and high, 

Who in the universe of God are wise 

To read His thought for future age, as nigh. 

'Tis said there are no prophets but in Bible ken, 
That God full truth vouchsafed to servants ages 

past, 
But now no longer speaks with creature man 

as then ; 
And yet no falser libel ere on God were cast. 

For he who thinks the thought of God, ere yet 

'tis done, 
Speaking forth with fearlessness, 
Is nothing less than God's inspired one, — 
Prophet — forthteller — of His righteousness. 



168 



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